Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Excessive dice in strategy games

[quote name="Mischief Maker"]A while ago I bought Fantasy Wars and its expansion/sequel Elven Legacy and I remarked aloud that this was the game Battle for Wesnoth should have been. Randomness plays a big part in Fantasy Wars, but it's never "Fuck you, even though position, terrain, and unit choice were on your side, the RNG decided you'll lose this round." The recent talk of Front Mission reminded me of <A HREF="http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21317&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a" TARGET="new">an article</A> by one of the designers of Wesnoth that defends the excessive RNG influence by comparing Wesnoth to Fire Emblem. Like Prince of Space, I think his power lies in choosing incompetent foes: [quote]Wesnoth's approach also requires a substantial amount of analytical ability from the player. In chess, and in Fire Emblem, one knows that if they lost, they made a mistake. In Wesnoth, one can occasionally play better, and still lose. Bad in many ways perhaps, but still it adds an interesting facet: it requires more analysis as a player. You have to be able to distinguish from situations where you played a good strategy but still lost, and situations where you lost because of your poor strategy. Certainly, in real games, a losing player will almost certainly have made mistakes, but working out what those mistakes were becomes difficult, and requires great analysis. In my opinion, many people who struggle to improve at Wesnoth do so for this very reason. They fail to see strategic mistakes they make, resulting in them losing, as such, instead believing their loss was a result of luck. Other times they may blame the wrong things for their loss, and correct the wrong things. This analytical ability is a crucial skill required for Wesnoth play, and simply wouldn't be needed if luck wasn't such a big factor. I also do not think that in fact, Wesnoth has a great deal of luck compared to many other games. Games such as backgammon, poker, bridge, and settlers of catan involve higher levels of luck. Most versions of Civilization have at least as much luck in their combat systems.[/quote] Besides the obvious points that poker SUCKS when you take away the human element of bluffing and play a computer, and the obvious point that getting an aircraft carrier sunk by a stoneage archer was the biggest complaint people had about Civ 1 and was subsequently fixed in Civ 2, is he using the RNG as a dodge to get out of having to play balance the levels, ala. Bastion?[/quote]