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Haven’t we all said it before? Or someone said it to us at least? "That was lucky!" You just had a close call but luckily for you, it all turned out okay. But why was it luck and not skill? Was it that the enemy’s gun jammed? That the pick up appeared just in the nick of time? That the level 3 acid arrow didn’t poison your Necromancer? These things have no bearing on the player. The player cannot make the enemy’s gun jam, they can’t make a health pickup magically appear, and they can’t effect the virtual dice rolls of those stat-based RPGs. So how much of our gaming experience is really down to our own skill, not pure luck?
Looking back to the older times of gaming it may appear that gaming was more down to skill. Enemies weren’t subject to vast amounts of AI. They were basically on set paths and designed simply to collide with the player (as in Mario and Sonic) to cause them damage or to fire projectiles either in a set pattern or upon seeing the player character. Nowadays enemy intelligence is more advanced. Or maybe intelligence is the wrong word, but whether enemies in games are ‘truly’ intelligent is a different debate altogether... Anyway, enemies have many more ways of reacting to the player. They can be programmed to hunt the player down if they don’t know where he/she is, they can run away if they take too much damage, they can call for backup, and many other functions. But how much of how an enemy reacts is down to the player? Take the FPS genre and games like Perfect Dark and Half-Life. Certainly for Perfect Dark when an enemy saw you they would open fire, but there were many different ways of them to shoot at you. They could fire a short burst, they could kneel down to take aim and fire, sometimes they’d begin slowly walking towards you while firing a whole clip off. Sometimes they’d even throw a grenade. So how did the enemy decide which action to take? Certainly on Perfect Dark which method of shooting they chose seemed quite random. So if they chose to take a method of firing that is less accurate the player would be lucky. If they chose a more accurate way such as the one stated above where enemies slowly march towards the player firing off a whole clip the player would be considerably less lucky. Another game, Half-Life. Anyone like myself who decided to dabble in a bit of level making for Half-Life will have come across the Node points used by enemies. These allow enemies something of a set course, but rather than the player setting out their exact route when making a level they can actually react to sounds of the player. Normally they will just patrol the nodes, but if they hear gunshots or something they would react and look for the player. The Nodes were very effective when used with certain enemies (in particular the assassins) as they would actually try to evade the player then come up from behind them. The Nodes made a huge difference to how effective the assassins were as anyone who made a level with assassins and no nodes testify.
But were games more down to skill when AI was not around? Certainly when AI becomes a lot more advanced I don’t think this will be the case. A game will learn from each player and learn new ways to attack, new strategies, which should mean that the player and the computer are constantly improving to try and best the other, and constantly learning new strategies. But at the moment AI is limited to a variety of reactions based partly on what seems like pure luck (ie. They are random) and partly on the player (ie. Enemies may be programmed to hunt down a fleeing player, or call for backup when they take X amount of damage). Now this may mean the player has to keep themselves on their toes a little more as the enemy is less predictable, but it also means enemies are more prone to mistakes, reacting not in an entirely bad way, but in a way that wouldn't be best to cause the player most greif. When enemies were simply on a set course like say space invaders, the enemy couldn’t do something wrong. There was no reaction to what the player was doing, the enemy just moved closer and closer while the player tried to avoid their fire and kill them all. There wasn’t really any luck involved, because every player had pretty much the same game. Play something like Perfect Dark, Rogue Squadron or Rogue 2, or any game with modern AI in it and no two people will get the same reactions from enemies. Their firing patterns will differ, the way the groups are arranged will change, and it’s all down to how the player acts, and processes to randomly determine routines to give the feel of variety. After all, before the player enters, it’s the same level whoever is playing.
Some games still are totally down to skill. Super Monkey Ball for instance has no enemies to speak of, hazards don’t change depending on the player’s approach to the level, they simply follow a set routine. A player may nearly teeter off the edge of a platform, correct it over to the other side and nearly teeter off that side too, but then manage to correct it. And that may seem lucky. But even then, that is the player making their own luck, it was still them using the analogue stick to control the tilt of the environment.
So next time you win a game just think to yourself, how much was down to your skill, and how much to pure luck...
Looking back to the older times of gaming it may appear that gaming was more down to skill. Enemies weren’t subject to vast amounts of AI. They were basically on set paths and designed simply to collide with the player (as in Mario and Sonic) to cause them damage or to fire projectiles either in a set pattern or upon seeing the player character. Nowadays enemy intelligence is more advanced. Or maybe intelligence is the wrong word, but whether enemies in games are ‘truly’ intelligent is a different debate altogether... Anyway, enemies have many more ways of reacting to the player. They can be programmed to hunt the player down if they don’t know where he/she is, they can run away if they take too much damage, they can call for backup, and many other functions. But how much of how an enemy reacts is down to the player? Take the FPS genre and games like Perfect Dark and Half-Life. Certainly for Perfect Dark when an enemy saw you they would open fire, but there were many different ways of them to shoot at you. They could fire a short burst, they could kneel down to take aim and fire, sometimes they’d begin slowly walking towards you while firing a whole clip off. Sometimes they’d even throw a grenade. So how did the enemy decide which action to take? Certainly on Perfect Dark which method of shooting they chose seemed quite random. So if they chose to take a method of firing that is less accurate the player would be lucky. If they chose a more accurate way such as the one stated above where enemies slowly march towards the player firing off a whole clip the player would be considerably less lucky. Another game, Half-Life. Anyone like myself who decided to dabble in a bit of level making for Half-Life will have come across the Node points used by enemies. These allow enemies something of a set course, but rather than the player setting out their exact route when making a level they can actually react to sounds of the player. Normally they will just patrol the nodes, but if they hear gunshots or something they would react and look for the player. The Nodes were very effective when used with certain enemies (in particular the assassins) as they would actually try to evade the player then come up from behind them. The Nodes made a huge difference to how effective the assassins were as anyone who made a level with assassins and no nodes testify.
But were games more down to skill when AI was not around? Certainly when AI becomes a lot more advanced I don’t think this will be the case. A game will learn from each player and learn new ways to attack, new strategies, which should mean that the player and the computer are constantly improving to try and best the other, and constantly learning new strategies. But at the moment AI is limited to a variety of reactions based partly on what seems like pure luck (ie. They are random) and partly on the player (ie. Enemies may be programmed to hunt down a fleeing player, or call for backup when they take X amount of damage). Now this may mean the player has to keep themselves on their toes a little more as the enemy is less predictable, but it also means enemies are more prone to mistakes, reacting not in an entirely bad way, but in a way that wouldn't be best to cause the player most greif. When enemies were simply on a set course like say space invaders, the enemy couldn’t do something wrong. There was no reaction to what the player was doing, the enemy just moved closer and closer while the player tried to avoid their fire and kill them all. There wasn’t really any luck involved, because every player had pretty much the same game. Play something like Perfect Dark, Rogue Squadron or Rogue 2, or any game with modern AI in it and no two people will get the same reactions from enemies. Their firing patterns will differ, the way the groups are arranged will change, and it’s all down to how the player acts, and processes to randomly determine routines to give the feel of variety. After all, before the player enters, it’s the same level whoever is playing.
Some games still are totally down to skill. Super Monkey Ball for instance has no enemies to speak of, hazards don’t change depending on the player’s approach to the level, they simply follow a set routine. A player may nearly teeter off the edge of a platform, correct it over to the other side and nearly teeter off that side too, but then manage to correct it. And that may seem lucky. But even then, that is the player making their own luck, it was still them using the analogue stick to control the tilt of the environment.
So next time you win a game just think to yourself, how much was down to your skill, and how much to pure luck...
Yeah, I used to suck at FPS but after Goldeneye (which I played far too much :D) I got quite good at them... I also played Half-Life and Team Fortress Classic (online mod for Half-Life) far too much at one point a couple of years ago...
But the moral is... practice makes perfect...
well, not perfect, but you can cope with bad luck if you get good enough through practice...
Ah, heck, forget the moral of the story... just enjoy your games! :D
But the moral is... practice makes perfect...
well, not perfect, but you can cope with bad luck if you get good enough through practice...
Ah, heck, forget the moral of the story... just enjoy your games! :D
Well done once again Sibs! :)
You won't need a job to buy games this summer with the rate you've been recently winning at! :o
Super Smash Bros. Melée comes to my mind when I think of 'lucky times' in gaming. Just yesterday I was playing against a Giant Luigi, and with no more than about 1.5 seconds on the clock, he had jumped towards my team, missed, and fallen straight down the hole!
I find that loads of things like that happen to me in this game alone!
I've had luck in games like Perfect Dark and GoldenEye too.
Usually when i've completely missed the enemies and hit something flamable instead by mistake! And it does the job for you. :)
I don't find those games 'easy' like everyone else does, in fact, I absolutely SUCK at all First Person Shooters!
I need a lot of luck to get far in them!!
You won't need a job to buy games this summer with the rate you've been recently winning at! :o
Super Smash Bros. Melée comes to my mind when I think of 'lucky times' in gaming. Just yesterday I was playing against a Giant Luigi, and with no more than about 1.5 seconds on the clock, he had jumped towards my team, missed, and fallen straight down the hole!
I find that loads of things like that happen to me in this game alone!
I've had luck in games like Perfect Dark and GoldenEye too.
Usually when i've completely missed the enemies and hit something flamable instead by mistake! And it does the job for you. :)
I don't find those games 'easy' like everyone else does, in fact, I absolutely SUCK at all First Person Shooters!
I need a lot of luck to get far in them!!
I think one major factor in this is the desire for variety. You need a fairly large amount of AI routines to make a player believe he's playing against 'real' enemies, who are actually thinking. Of course this has never been fully acheived as no enemies in games actually think for themselves, but to make the player believe this enemies have to do things differently from each other, which means a lot of AI routines, and unless the developers put a hell of a lot of work into when each routine is used, some will always be randomly chosen. And this is what introduces the element of luck.
But yes, I think all games, for a long time to come will have elements of luck as long as they have AI in enemies. And most games do. But in many genres it doesn't really matter to some extent. RPGs I mentioned before. The whole thing about many kinds of heavily stat based RPGs is not that you play it thinking the whole thing is random, it's that you prepare before battle. You select the kinds of armour your character/party wears, you select the spells you will be able to cast, you select which weapons will be best. It's all about customisation, trying to create a character/party to best suit the task ahead. And FPS games are generally games where you are faced with a huge amount of enemies, and just you against them. You're hardly going to turn down a little good luck on the way. So to some extent the element of luck doesn't matter all that much.
I believe as AI begins to become truly intelligent, and learn from players, the luck elemnet will reduce. I think online gaming will also help in this, as players will have fought truly intelligent people (well, I suppose that's debatable :D) and will want more of the same when playing single player games- not just pre set routines, but properly reacting to new scenarios the player throws at the CPU.
PS. I won a GAD! WOHOO WOHOO WOHOO! Thanks SR!!!
But yes, I think all games, for a long time to come will have elements of luck as long as they have AI in enemies. And most games do. But in many genres it doesn't really matter to some extent. RPGs I mentioned before. The whole thing about many kinds of heavily stat based RPGs is not that you play it thinking the whole thing is random, it's that you prepare before battle. You select the kinds of armour your character/party wears, you select the spells you will be able to cast, you select which weapons will be best. It's all about customisation, trying to create a character/party to best suit the task ahead. And FPS games are generally games where you are faced with a huge amount of enemies, and just you against them. You're hardly going to turn down a little good luck on the way. So to some extent the element of luck doesn't matter all that much.
I believe as AI begins to become truly intelligent, and learn from players, the luck elemnet will reduce. I think online gaming will also help in this, as players will have fought truly intelligent people (well, I suppose that's debatable :D) and will want more of the same when playing single player games- not just pre set routines, but properly reacting to new scenarios the player throws at the CPU.
PS. I won a GAD! WOHOO WOHOO WOHOO! Thanks SR!!!
I think that all games require skill but they also need luck to maybe giver better results.
Say MGS2. That needs a lot of skill to play because it's all about decieving the enemies, but you also need luck so that they don't find you. I think if you look at any kind of game, it needs luck and skill to play and I think that is why games have evolved into what they are today.
Say MGS2. That needs a lot of skill to play because it's all about decieving the enemies, but you also need luck so that they don't find you. I think if you look at any kind of game, it needs luck and skill to play and I think that is why games have evolved into what they are today.
I found it strange when thinking about it because RPGs are probably my favourite genre, yet some of them require little real skill...
I never meant that Goldeneye or PD require no skill, obviously (especially on harder settings) they require quite a lot of skill, but there is also a fairly large amount of luck in the proceedings too...
If you've read Aliboys post about professional gamers ('Paid to play') then it will be obvious that developers of games for professional gamers need to reduce the element of luck in their games as much as possible. Multiplay only games reduce luck a lot, as there is no AI, just real human opponents.
But I suppose it's true to say that any game still takes some measure of luck and some measure of skill to win. What their balance is must really depend on the game itself (and the player too... if they are good enough they shouldn't need good luck to win, and should even be able to cope when they are unlucky...)
Anyway... do you feel lucky...? Well, do ya?
I never meant that Goldeneye or PD require no skill, obviously (especially on harder settings) they require quite a lot of skill, but there is also a fairly large amount of luck in the proceedings too...
If you've read Aliboys post about professional gamers ('Paid to play') then it will be obvious that developers of games for professional gamers need to reduce the element of luck in their games as much as possible. Multiplay only games reduce luck a lot, as there is no AI, just real human opponents.
But I suppose it's true to say that any game still takes some measure of luck and some measure of skill to win. What their balance is must really depend on the game itself (and the player too... if they are good enough they shouldn't need good luck to win, and should even be able to cope when they are unlucky...)
Anyway... do you feel lucky...? Well, do ya?
Like you say I agree RPG are so random that every now and again it requires a litte luck to get through certain sections. Particulary in the FF games.
When I'm thinking about it now Goldeneye needed a certain degree of skill to play, remember having to sneak around on the 007 difficulty setting, using only limited ammo and having to pop of head shots at lightning speed.
To win at that game you needed to have some skill certainly for the latter levels (well maybe there is a little luck involved, gah).
Like you say in Perfect Dark skill is needed to negotiate what to do as Enemy AI kicks in and attacks you.
No matter what game it is somewhere in there you need a little luck, Tony Hawk games don't need much skill but then again you don't need much luck either.
Nice post, Sibs made me think (woah).
:0)
When I'm thinking about it now Goldeneye needed a certain degree of skill to play, remember having to sneak around on the 007 difficulty setting, using only limited ammo and having to pop of head shots at lightning speed.
To win at that game you needed to have some skill certainly for the latter levels (well maybe there is a little luck involved, gah).
Like you say in Perfect Dark skill is needed to negotiate what to do as Enemy AI kicks in and attacks you.
No matter what game it is somewhere in there you need a little luck, Tony Hawk games don't need much skill but then again you don't need much luck either.
Nice post, Sibs made me think (woah).
:0)
Haven’t we all said it before? Or someone said it to us at least? "That was lucky!" You just had a close call but luckily for you, it all turned out okay. But why was it luck and not skill? Was it that the enemy’s gun jammed? That the pick up appeared just in the nick of time? That the level 3 acid arrow didn’t poison your Necromancer? These things have no bearing on the player. The player cannot make the enemy’s gun jam, they can’t make a health pickup magically appear, and they can’t effect the virtual dice rolls of those stat-based RPGs. So how much of our gaming experience is really down to our own skill, not pure luck?
Looking back to the older times of gaming it may appear that gaming was more down to skill. Enemies weren’t subject to vast amounts of AI. They were basically on set paths and designed simply to collide with the player (as in Mario and Sonic) to cause them damage or to fire projectiles either in a set pattern or upon seeing the player character. Nowadays enemy intelligence is more advanced. Or maybe intelligence is the wrong word, but whether enemies in games are ‘truly’ intelligent is a different debate altogether... Anyway, enemies have many more ways of reacting to the player. They can be programmed to hunt the player down if they don’t know where he/she is, they can run away if they take too much damage, they can call for backup, and many other functions. But how much of how an enemy reacts is down to the player? Take the FPS genre and games like Perfect Dark and Half-Life. Certainly for Perfect Dark when an enemy saw you they would open fire, but there were many different ways of them to shoot at you. They could fire a short burst, they could kneel down to take aim and fire, sometimes they’d begin slowly walking towards you while firing a whole clip off. Sometimes they’d even throw a grenade. So how did the enemy decide which action to take? Certainly on Perfect Dark which method of shooting they chose seemed quite random. So if they chose to take a method of firing that is less accurate the player would be lucky. If they chose a more accurate way such as the one stated above where enemies slowly march towards the player firing off a whole clip the player would be considerably less lucky. Another game, Half-Life. Anyone like myself who decided to dabble in a bit of level making for Half-Life will have come across the Node points used by enemies. These allow enemies something of a set course, but rather than the player setting out their exact route when making a level they can actually react to sounds of the player. Normally they will just patrol the nodes, but if they hear gunshots or something they would react and look for the player. The Nodes were very effective when used with certain enemies (in particular the assassins) as they would actually try to evade the player then come up from behind them. The Nodes made a huge difference to how effective the assassins were as anyone who made a level with assassins and no nodes testify.
But were games more down to skill when AI was not around? Certainly when AI becomes a lot more advanced I don’t think this will be the case. A game will learn from each player and learn new ways to attack, new strategies, which should mean that the player and the computer are constantly improving to try and best the other, and constantly learning new strategies. But at the moment AI is limited to a variety of reactions based partly on what seems like pure luck (ie. They are random) and partly on the player (ie. Enemies may be programmed to hunt down a fleeing player, or call for backup when they take X amount of damage). Now this may mean the player has to keep themselves on their toes a little more as the enemy is less predictable, but it also means enemies are more prone to mistakes, reacting not in an entirely bad way, but in a way that wouldn't be best to cause the player most greif. When enemies were simply on a set course like say space invaders, the enemy couldn’t do something wrong. There was no reaction to what the player was doing, the enemy just moved closer and closer while the player tried to avoid their fire and kill them all. There wasn’t really any luck involved, because every player had pretty much the same game. Play something like Perfect Dark, Rogue Squadron or Rogue 2, or any game with modern AI in it and no two people will get the same reactions from enemies. Their firing patterns will differ, the way the groups are arranged will change, and it’s all down to how the player acts, and processes to randomly determine routines to give the feel of variety. After all, before the player enters, it’s the same level whoever is playing.
Some games still are totally down to skill. Super Monkey Ball for instance has no enemies to speak of, hazards don’t change depending on the player’s approach to the level, they simply follow a set routine. A player may nearly teeter off the edge of a platform, correct it over to the other side and nearly teeter off that side too, but then manage to correct it. And that may seem lucky. But even then, that is the player making their own luck, it was still them using the analogue stick to control the tilt of the environment.
So next time you win a game just think to yourself, how much was down to your skill, and how much to pure luck...
Looking back to the older times of gaming it may appear that gaming was more down to skill. Enemies weren’t subject to vast amounts of AI. They were basically on set paths and designed simply to collide with the player (as in Mario and Sonic) to cause them damage or to fire projectiles either in a set pattern or upon seeing the player character. Nowadays enemy intelligence is more advanced. Or maybe intelligence is the wrong word, but whether enemies in games are ‘truly’ intelligent is a different debate altogether... Anyway, enemies have many more ways of reacting to the player. They can be programmed to hunt the player down if they don’t know where he/she is, they can run away if they take too much damage, they can call for backup, and many other functions. But how much of how an enemy reacts is down to the player? Take the FPS genre and games like Perfect Dark and Half-Life. Certainly for Perfect Dark when an enemy saw you they would open fire, but there were many different ways of them to shoot at you. They could fire a short burst, they could kneel down to take aim and fire, sometimes they’d begin slowly walking towards you while firing a whole clip off. Sometimes they’d even throw a grenade. So how did the enemy decide which action to take? Certainly on Perfect Dark which method of shooting they chose seemed quite random. So if they chose to take a method of firing that is less accurate the player would be lucky. If they chose a more accurate way such as the one stated above where enemies slowly march towards the player firing off a whole clip the player would be considerably less lucky. Another game, Half-Life. Anyone like myself who decided to dabble in a bit of level making for Half-Life will have come across the Node points used by enemies. These allow enemies something of a set course, but rather than the player setting out their exact route when making a level they can actually react to sounds of the player. Normally they will just patrol the nodes, but if they hear gunshots or something they would react and look for the player. The Nodes were very effective when used with certain enemies (in particular the assassins) as they would actually try to evade the player then come up from behind them. The Nodes made a huge difference to how effective the assassins were as anyone who made a level with assassins and no nodes testify.
But were games more down to skill when AI was not around? Certainly when AI becomes a lot more advanced I don’t think this will be the case. A game will learn from each player and learn new ways to attack, new strategies, which should mean that the player and the computer are constantly improving to try and best the other, and constantly learning new strategies. But at the moment AI is limited to a variety of reactions based partly on what seems like pure luck (ie. They are random) and partly on the player (ie. Enemies may be programmed to hunt down a fleeing player, or call for backup when they take X amount of damage). Now this may mean the player has to keep themselves on their toes a little more as the enemy is less predictable, but it also means enemies are more prone to mistakes, reacting not in an entirely bad way, but in a way that wouldn't be best to cause the player most greif. When enemies were simply on a set course like say space invaders, the enemy couldn’t do something wrong. There was no reaction to what the player was doing, the enemy just moved closer and closer while the player tried to avoid their fire and kill them all. There wasn’t really any luck involved, because every player had pretty much the same game. Play something like Perfect Dark, Rogue Squadron or Rogue 2, or any game with modern AI in it and no two people will get the same reactions from enemies. Their firing patterns will differ, the way the groups are arranged will change, and it’s all down to how the player acts, and processes to randomly determine routines to give the feel of variety. After all, before the player enters, it’s the same level whoever is playing.
Some games still are totally down to skill. Super Monkey Ball for instance has no enemies to speak of, hazards don’t change depending on the player’s approach to the level, they simply follow a set routine. A player may nearly teeter off the edge of a platform, correct it over to the other side and nearly teeter off that side too, but then manage to correct it. And that may seem lucky. But even then, that is the player making their own luck, it was still them using the analogue stick to control the tilt of the environment.
So next time you win a game just think to yourself, how much was down to your skill, and how much to pure luck...