
How do you stop a randomized game from randomly being boring sometimes? - yread
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/05/stellaris-and-strategy-gamings-bad-luck-problem/
======
Olscore
Discovered a quote from Sid Meier's the other day; he says "A game is a series
of interesting choices."

From that perspective, the definition of a game and what constitutes gaming
changes dramatically. It undercuts the question here. Preventing a game from
being randomly boring is an odd question. A better question might be, how can
we keep the player's decision-making interesting, regardless of what is
generated? The article says it directly, but misses the golden quote which I
think is essential. That quote offers up some really unique ways to define a
game too. Very cool.

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dahart
Working on console games, I got out of the habit of using a random number
generator directly for anything. I noticed RNGs producing boring events
frequently. Instead, I started using a random shuffle to guarantee events
aren't repeated before all other events have happened, but it still feels
random. There were also cases where I thought random would be good at first,
and later discovered that I preferred a simple hard-coded pre-set order
repeating in a loop... It would feel random and go unnoticed by most players,
but being able to see the pattern allows some players to take advantage.
Usually I'd use random to avoid that, but occasionally realized it was okay
and actually made that moment in the game more fun.

~~~
mikeash
A classic example of this is Tetris, where the official version provides a
random permutation of the seven pieces, then another random permutation, etc.
This gives you variety and unpredictability while simultaneously guaranteeing
that you never go without any particular piece for too long. Many clones just
provide pieces purely randomly, which tends to give you a feast or famine
situation for useful pieces.

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pjc50
XCOM2 has a slightly controversial "randomness compensator": repeatedly
missing increases your chance to hit, and being hit repeatedly by the aliens
lowers their hit chance.

Various games (L4D is the first prominent example, there may be others before
it) include "AI directors" that try to keep the player involved through
balancing exiting events and periods of tension. This makes it a lot harder to
have a "boring" game, or one where you get "unfairly" hammered by the
randomness.

In fiction I'd trace this to Asimov's Foundation series, which is premised on
"psychohistory" being a sort of fully deterministic fusion of economics and
psychology enabling the development of future society to be predicted. Until a
few books into the series where the "mule" is introduced, who is an individual
powerful and unpredictable enough to throw off the determinism of historical
inevitability.

~~~
evincarofautumn
> repeatedly missing increases your chance to hit

That’s amazing—a logical fallacy as a feature!

~~~
Kurtz79
How is this a logical fallacy ?

Technically you would see the effect of your shot (i.e. too much to the left)
and adjust your aim (more to the right).

~~~
MereInterest
He is referring to the Gambler's Fallacy
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy)).
That is, the belief that in a series of uncorrelated events, after a long
string of losses, you are more likely to have a win.

~~~
Kurtz79
Thanks, I knew about the Gambler's Fallacy, but I really didn't make the
connection (also since they are not really uncorrelated... :) )

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Agentlien
This really resonates with me, especially since he mentioned Master of Orion.
I grew up with Master of Orion 2 and I can't even make an estimate of how many
sessions or hours I played. Another game which I still play actively is Magic:
The Gathering. I mention this, because I think the contrast between these two
games highlights the subject at hand.

I have experienced more incredible stories unfolding in both MoO2 and MtG than
I could possibly remember. Both are games where careful strategy and tactics
combined with randomness can lead to some unbelievably epic moments. Here's
the thing, though: in MoO2, despite a lot of random events, I can't remember a
single time I played a session which wasn't exciting or didn't feel fair. In
Magic, this happens routinely. Just Google "mana screw" or "mana flood" for
more results than you can read, complaining about randomness leading to boring
matches where you, as someone put it, "don't get to play Magic"[1].

I still play Magic on a daily basis, and I still love the game, but I've spent
a lot of time damning the frequency of these boring matches and wondering if
there was a simple strategy or rule change which would fix this, while still
leaving the soul of the game intact.

[1]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/4c2f65/what_funda...](https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/4c2f65/what_fundamental_rules_or_gameplay_problems_does/d1elu5k)

~~~
timje1
Hearthstone fixed this mana issue by having the mana automatically increase by
1 each turn, up to 10. This means that every card you draw will be a spell you
can cast or a minion you can play - you at least get to play 'hearthstone'
during the match.

~~~
eterm
They also went with 30 card decks (max 2 each card) rather than 60 card decks
(max 4 each type) which further reduces variance of hands.

Top-decking is still very real in both games, sometimes you just need that 1
card to win or you'll lose next turn.

~~~
Bartweiss
Unfortunately, Hearthstone's card design has aggressively worked against their
randomness-mitigation in the game structure.

In their search for 'dramatic' cards, they've started introducing "triggers on
draw" effects, "get a random creature from your deck" effects (maybe it'll
cost 2 mana, maybe 10!), and my favorite - "play this card, then shuffle it
back, then play it again, then all your creatures become different ones".

The card designers have consistently chosen exciting events over stable
gameplay, to the point where it's far more random than MTG.

~~~
spdustin
Sure, there are decks where you must pray to RNGesus that you get the effect
you're looking for. Those decks will not get you far up the ladder, however.
Nearly every player above Rank 10 is using a predictable deck.
Elise/map/monkey isn't a game-winning card.

Also, if you're still seeing top decking in Hearthstone, you haven't
progressed enough in the ranks to see the long-term players. There is rarely
any top decking going on past even rank 15.

~~~
Bartweiss
I definitely haven't gone to the highest ranks of Hearthstone lately - it
wasn't worth fighting up the random parts of the ladder when so many other
games exist. I did well with it for a while around the Nax release, then
abandoned it because I wasn't interested in paying for the expansions and
didn't want to keep up with the power creep.

I don't think the core, high-ladder gameplay is broken, but I think a lot of
their design efforts are badly counterproductive. MTG's long-term survival can
largely be credited to fighting power creep and strong-but-random effects, and
I think Hearthstone's design looks more like a shorter-term cash in on those
effects.

~~~
spdustin
The new "standard" mode doesn't allow Nax or GnG cards in your deck, which
levels things out a bit. Maybe you would like giving it a shot now? My advice:
use gold to play arena. You'll always get a card pack, and get to practice
with cards you don't otherwise have available to you. It's worth the extra 50
gold (which you'll likely earn back if you make it to three victories anyway)
for the exposure to other cards/combos.

There are still RNGesus decks in the lower rungs of the ladder - I play one.
But above 15 or so and most decks are using predictable cards with few random
effects.

~~~
Bartweiss
Woah, that's a huge change since I played. Some of those cards were definitely
frustrating me, as was the fact that the card pool made the 'random' effects
hard to anticipate. My biggest complaints were probably about League of
Explorers and Blackrock cards, but it's still progress.

Arena was definitely my preferred playstyle - it had a lot of variance, and I
never felt punished for not having all the right legendaries. On the main
ladder I felt like I was hitting a ceiling where I played lots of netdecks I
couldn't "afford", and just lost interest. Maybe it's worth another look!

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1123581321
The context is that the author wrote a negative review of a space strategy
game because he had poor experiences with it. This article seems to be a way
of saying that he was wrong to say the game is objectively bad without denying
his own bad experiences are an objective problem.

The solution is to tune the game and add additional mid-game content (the part
of the game with the most room for dynamism), which the author points out is
on its way.

One of the more interesting comments said that the game would be well served
if its developers collected play through data and started prioritizing the
game seeds that tended to cause the most interesting games, arguing that there
would be enough seeds to hide the lack of randomness.

~~~
pjc50
_This article seems to be a way of saying that he was wrong to say the game is
objectively bad_

Where did he say that? People seem to keep mistaking reviews for impossibly
objective analyses of games.

~~~
wastedhours
"Seems" \- it's not explicit, but the implication is that objectively saying a
randomised game is bad when it's only been bad from a subjective perspective
isn't the best approach.

~~~
pjc50
But I'm not seeing where the reviewer made the claim that the game was
objectively bad?

~~~
wastedhours
It's in the linked review[0] that he wrote, and the subsequent follow up by
the developer[1].

[0] [http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/09/stellaris-
review](http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/09/stellaris-review) [1]
[http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1solvon](http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1solvon)

~~~
jsnell
It'd be really strange for any publication to claim their reviews are
"objective" (there's objectivegamereviews.com, but it is intended as humor).
The usual view is something along the lines of a review being just an
indication of one person's experience with a game at a specific time. And as
far as I can see, the latter is the case here as well.

Neither page you link to contains the word "objective". The only mention of
the words "bad" is in the phrase "bad luck", in a sentence specifically
talking about how other people might have a better experience and Rowan might
have been just unlucky. There is a score, but to interpret that you'd look at
the review guidelines for IGN. To quote: Under no circumstances are review
scores influenced by anything other than _our own opinions_ on the quality of
the product in question. (Emphasis mine).

------
flashman
From my experience so far, Stellaris will benefit greatly from performance and
feature patches (I hear lots of complaints about grinding late-game framerates
even in modestly-populated galaxies).

It does seem to suffer from a lack of gameplay options. I think a useful
comparison is Civilization V at launch versus after its 'Gods and Kings' and
'Brave New World' expansions, both of which added many new gameplay avenues.

The game seems to be more organic than strategic, lacking crossroads where
your decision is based on your priorities. The major exception is the research
system, where the 'choose one of three' feature means selecting one option
closes off the other two possibilities for an indeterminate period. But
besides that, in my experience the game is about expanding like a slime mold
and gradually wearing down your opposition (as conquest is the only viable
victory type).

~~~
adwf
I have a feeling from looking at the patch notes and plans for the future,
that they intended the ethics system to be a much more diversifying effect
than it currently is. ie. You would have a lot more factions within your
empire and sector rebellions would be something to deal with, making the mid-
game more exciting. Instead, if you can get a happy empire running, it's
pretty stable all the way through and the mid-game can get very boring.

Have to say that I love the research system though. It completely turns a lot
of standard 4x/strategy style gameplay on its head by preventing 100% forward
planning.

~~~
Agentlien
I haven't played Stellaris, but I looked up the research system after reading
your comment. It does actually seem really cool and like a good use of
randomness.

It reminds me of Master of Orion 2, which also had non-deterministic research.
There, each point in the tech tree was a category containing multiple items
and, when research into that category was done, you got a random item from
that category. If you wanted one of the others, you'd have to get it by
trading with or spying on other races.

~~~
santoriv
IIRC it only worked like that if you had the race pick Uncreative. Normally
you got to pick which tech in the category you wanted to research. So you
could plan ahead if you were going with particular strategy (like Darlok
spying with all the spy techs).

But Master of Orion 1 did have a somewhat randomized tech research series.

~~~
Agentlien
Yes, you're right, I misremembered. Most races got what they selected. But
only being able to select one at least limited what you could research.

Uncreative races got a random one in the category they chose and Creative
races got all items in the category they chose. It was far too simple to play
as a creative race, such as Psilon.

------
corysama
It's a perennial struggle for each new generation of game designers when their
internal theory of gameplay mechanics comes into conflict with the general
public's completely off-based intuition about statistics.

Basically, people at large don't grok statistics at all. Instead they think of
randomness in terms of permutations (drawing cards from a deck). When you pit
them against "well-designed" statistical randomness, you are rewarded with a
cacophony of complaints about how the simulation is cheating, rigged and
unrealistic. Sid Meier had a great GDC keynote about his multi-decade struggle
to convey basic concepts like "Something that has only a 1% chance of
happening will still happen sometimes." This gets worse when you realize that
a million daily active users means one-in-a-million events are a many-times-
daily occurrence. That means _every day_ someone will complain that "I rolled
a one out of ten SIX TIMES IN A ROW!!! That should never happen! You are
explicitly cheating me! I demand my money back!"

So, yeah. Don't rand() in games. Do the shuffle and everyone will be much
happier.

------
sanj
Related: I wrote a mahjong game many years back (the tile matching version;
not real mahjong).

It turns out you can have unwinnable boards if you build them purely randomly.

So I ended up having the app play the board in reverse to make sure it was
winnable!

It still managed to hit stalemates, while playing backwards, but they were
very rare. I just restarted instead of trying to avoid that situation
algorithmicly.

------
Animats
If the universe is a simulation, maybe this is why life sucks: User boredom if
it doesn't.

 _" Why is God punishing us?"_

------
navbaker
Having had "play a 4x space strategy" on my gaming bucket list for quite some
time, how does this game compare to others that I've had my eye on like
Galactic Civ 3 or Sins of a Solar Empire?

~~~
adwf
Firstly, I'll say Stellaris is a great game, but I would also say that
Stellaris isn't actually a pure 4X game if that's what you're looking for.
Something like Gal Civ 3 or Star Ruler 2 would be better on that front.
Stellaris is more like Civilization in space, or Crusader Kings.

It's grand strategy, about managing empires at a high level, whereas a 4X game
tends to be more about resource management, research, and building spaceships.

~~~
lachgr
> whereas a 4X game tends to be more about resource management, research, and
> building spaceships.

I think those three are represented as well in Stellaris. As mentioned above
research is done very well, and presents often dilemmas when you want to
research multiple things and you don't know when a certain option will be
available again.

Ships can be designed by the player and offer a lot of customisability.
Resources are abstracted behind three basic resources so is probably not as
deep as other games, but it is in.

I really like the randomness of Stellaris, not only of the research options
but also the randomly generated galaxy and AI empires, which means you never
encounter the same systems or competitors (unless, of course, you start in the
Sol system or let certain empires spawn, which can be chosen at game start).

The article seems to be of someone who doesn't really like the game. Arguably
it isn't as fleshed out as other 4X games, but to me it doesn't seem fair to
blame it on the random generated content.

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AimHere
Sometimes intermittent boredom might be what you want...

Here is a game reviewer pointing out that one particular game (Sunless Sea)
appears to be somewhat improved by having stretches of monotony interrupted by
more interesting gameplay.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r6VtUW9504](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r6VtUW9504)

------
jetengine
There is a theory that multiplayer is more interesting than singleplayer
because you are playing against unpredictable characters.

Someone toyed with this idea by letting the player of the game play against
animals:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DXiuzAQztU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DXiuzAQztU)

------
raverbashing
Well, sometimes you can't

Freecell is a good example, some games are trivially easy or too hard (not
sure if there are impossible games)

~~~
fenomas
Freecell would be a perfect example of how to tune difficulty.

Consider: some initial layouts can be solved without using all four free
cells; others can't be solved without five or more cells. If a Freecell game
implements a solver that can find the minimum number of cells needed to solve
a given layout, then it could easily tune the difficulty - by only giving
players layouts that require certain numbers of cells, or conversely by
varying the number of free cells depending on the layout.

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Pica_soO
Well you got to have a story arc for the players experience. A short-term arc
and in the long term story-arc of which the luck is just part. Randomized
positive/negative Events occur more often, the longer a arc is monotone.

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askyourmother
Bugs. Make sure it crashes at random times, then it takes longer to become
boring.

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fitzwatermellow
Fantastic question! Quick and dirty solution is simply to choose a
distribution that isn't uniformly random!

Instead of starting with your random number generator, build up the discrete
probability distribution function first. The histogram can have any shape you
want.

So, for example, in Tetris, rather than choosing a uniformly random next
piece, we give a 10% probability to a straight one, 20% to right-sided L, etc.
Now we begin to see patterns that can make gameplay challenging or
interesting. If a shape has not appeared in a while purely out of chance,
alter the distribution. Keeping track of what cards have been played and what
moves have been made forms the basis of a feedback loop that constantly
evolves.

~~~
Kapow
Tetris is actually an interesting example:

[http://tetris.wikia.com/wiki/Random_Generator](http://tetris.wikia.com/wiki/Random_Generator)

Officially branded Tetris games are required to use a "random bag" algorithm
where they generate random permutations of the 7 tetrominos, so that for every
7 pieces (aligned with the bag start) you get each type once. You can only get
two in a row if they appear at the end of one bag and the start of the next,
and conversely there's a maximum of 12 pieces between duplicates (start of one
bag, end of the next). Three in a row will never happen.

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babuskov
I was hoping for more, but it only talks about strategic video games.

~~~
vkou
An incredibly... Unpolished strategic video game, in particular.

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agentultra
Constraint propagation solvers seem to work well.

