Randomness and variance

[Moloch]

Mage wars is a game of strategy, taktik and luck. I love the first two and understand the need for the third

BUT...playing a match is a huge investment of time so usually I'm not playing often enough to avarage out the cases of extreme luck. And it dosn't feel good to win a game because your opponent rolled horrible and neither to loose one because a diceroll destroyed your "solid" strategy.

There have been threads about this before but they are very old and I would like to present one idea of mine and like to hear some feedback or even better ideas.

Swings of luck are most prominent when many dice are rolled. I would reduce this by giving players the option to trade dice in sets of 3. By rolling 3 dice less they automaticaly inflict 2 regular damage and 1 critical damage.
This is on avarage a tiny bit worse than rolling as you would expect 1.5 regular and 1.5 crit damage but you are save from all blanks and the enemy from all crit 2's. It also works with incorporeal objects and zombies both taking at least some damage but less than one would expect with a decent roll.

This idea could include a rule where at least one die would have to be rolled so it can ony be used with 4+ attack dice and used twice with 7+. It is meant for those heavy investments like forcehammer, drain life/mana, steelclaw attack after teleporting him...

[Sailor Vulcan]

Hmm. This seems a bit messy/awkward. A guaranteed 3 damage on rolls 4+ dice seems like it would significantly upset game balance. I agree that having a solid strategy ruined by poor dice rolls is unfair and disheartening, though.

One of the potential problems is that it's hard to determine in the middle of a game whether you're losing more because of bad rolls or because of insufficient tactics. Then at the end of the game when you're talking to your opponent and then you realize what went wrong.

Another issue is that the problem of rolling a bunch of blanks is the same for rolling 5 3-dice attacks as 3 5-dice attacks.

[Enti]

In my opinion playing good has a much bigger inpact in winning a game than luck.

For example:

It is an even game so far. Your mage is more early game and your opponent is more lategame. Despite that you start to focus damage on his familiar. You need 3-4 rounds to kill his familar, with good/average rolls you would have only needed 2-3. Now of course you can blame bad rolls for losing the game, but from an authorial point of view the strategy to focus on the familiar was the mistake,  not the bad rolls. They only made it a bit worse.

Of couse I won't deny, that at least average rolls are important and constantly rolling below average can mess up even a good strategy. But taking risks is a part of Mage wars, easy example:

Your plan is to cast a wall and then jet stream the opponent through the wall. And behind the wall there are 2 big hitters waiting to damage the enemy mage further. Big hitters: 5 dice each. Wall: 5*2 dice. Jet stream: 2 dice
I have at least 3 times observed this situation. And you can already guess what happened. Effect die below 4. So no push.  = ~15 dice dmg less this turn.
Why? Because the caster was greedy. Forcepush would have been 2 mana more expensive but because he wanted to make 2 dice more dmg and save 2 mana, he risked it.. And it backfired.
Now you can say: well, it was bad luck and that is the reason he lost in the end.
Or you can say, the decision to use jet stream was wrong/a calcualted risk.

I hope I could make my point. I don't think that Mage Wars has too much randomness in it. It has to some degree, yes, but you always need to take it into account when deciding.

/edit: I would like your idea a bit changed. To make sure not to mess up very important rolls where theoretically you have a very high chance of succeeding: Expected dmg -2
So if you have 3 rolls and you only need 1 dmg to kill a creature (without armor), you don't have to roll, because you can use this rule to solve it. Same thing when you have a 5 dice attack and the enemy creature has 3 life left(no armor again). 100% sure destruction.
But always demanding to have at least average rolls is a bit too demaning.

[BoomFrog]

First, large numbers of dice are more consistent but it is more memorable when disaster strikes. Mage wars actually has far less luck then any other similar game.

Your rule would change the balance of the game making small creatures less powerful. One of the advantages of having two goblin grunts over one of orc butcher is that overkilling one goblin doesn't help you kill the second goblin so luck works in the goblins favor more often then it doesn't.

If you have an important roll to make then you should buy some insurance,  by which I mean prepare akiro's favor.

[Moloch]

@Sailor Vulcan:

Another issue is that the problem of rolling a bunch of blanks is the same for rolling 5 3-dice attacks as 3 5-dice attacks.

In Magewars the way armor works makes those very different and this is also reflected in mana cost scaling (compare hurl rock and boulder's mana cost)

 I manage to win the lions share of my games, even with bad luck but it is still very anoying if a interesting strategy gets canceld because of some horrible rolls but worse is if my opponent has a great comeback and then the dice screw him.


@Enti:The overkill rule(exp. dmg -2) is interesting and very easy to implement, nice one!

I have some solid understanding of probabilistic and some cards allow to compensate, your forcepush example shows that. But the game comes with cards like Forcehammer where a good roll destroys a huge mana investment(destroyed conjuration) and a bad roll gives the player with the barely scratched conjuration 9 mana and one action advantage over his opponent.


@BoomFrog: With goblins you are already gambling because you need to roll some crits to even do damage because most commonly played creatures have some armor.
How would you solve the bitter taste of a match decided by desaster rather than what the players intended?

[sIKE]

@Sailor Vulcan:

Another issue is that the problem of rolling a bunch of blanks is the same for rolling 5 3-dice attacks as 3 5-dice attacks.

In Magewars the way armor works makes those very different and this is also reflected in mana cost scaling (compare hurl rock and boulder's mana cost)

 I manage to win the lions share of my games, even with bad luck but it is still very anoying if a interesting strategy gets canceld because of some horrible rolls but worse is if my opponent has a great comeback and then the dice screw him.


@Enti:The overkill rule(exp. dmg -2) is interesting and very easy to implement, nice one!

I have some solid understanding of probabilistic and some cards allow to compensate, your forcepush example shows that. But the game comes with cards like Forcehammer where a good roll destroys a huge mana investment(destroyed conjuration) and a bad roll gives the player with the barely scratched conjuration 9 mana and one action advantage over his opponent.


@BoomFrog: With goblins you are already gambling because you need to roll some crits to even do damage because most commonly played creatures have some armor.
How would you solve the bitter taste of a match decided by desaster rather than what the players intended?

Bad rolls means the gods were against you that day. Tomorrow will be different.

Still beats the hell out of praying that you draw the card you need to stay in the game and not get it and you opponent then gets the great draws 4 times in a row and demolishes you.

[V10lentray]

Goblins are War soldiers.

The War School has Armory.

Armory gives Friendly soldiers Armor +1 and Peircing +1.

[Sailor Vulcan]

@Sailor Vulcan:

Another issue is that the problem of rolling a bunch of blanks is the same for rolling 5 3-dice attacks as 3 5-dice attacks.

In Magewars the way armor works makes those very different and this is also reflected in mana cost scaling (compare hurl rock and boulder's mana cost)

 I manage to win the lions share of my games, even with bad luck but it is still very anoying if a interesting strategy gets canceld because of some horrible rolls but worse is if my opponent has a great comeback and then the dice screw him.


@Enti:The overkill rule(exp. dmg -2) is interesting and very easy to implement, nice one!

I have some solid understanding of probabilistic and some cards allow to compensate, your forcepush example shows that. But the game comes with cards like Forcehammer where a good roll destroys a huge mana investment(destroyed conjuration) and a bad roll gives the player with the barely scratched conjuration 9 mana and one action advantage over his opponent.


@BoomFrog: With goblins you are already gambling because you need to roll some crits to even do damage because most commonly played creatures have some armor.
How would you solve the bitter taste of a match decided by desaster rather than what the players intended?

What are you talking about? Armor stops normal damage. Blanks have nothing to do with armor. Whether you roll 9 blanks in 5 3-dice attacks, or you roll 9 blanks in 3 5-dice attacks, you still rolled 9 blanks. That's still 9 damage you didn't roll, regardless of armor. I did not say that 3 5-dice attacks are the equivalent of 5 3-dice attacks overall. I was talking specifically about blanks.

[Moloch]

What are you talking about? Armor stops normal damage. Blanks have nothing to do with armor. Whether you roll 9 blanks in 5 3-dice attacks, or you roll 9 blanks in 3 5-dice attacks, you still rolled 9 blanks. That's still 9 damage you didn't roll, regardless of armor. I did not say that 3 5-dice attacks are the equivalent of 5 3-dice attacks overall. I was talking specifically about blanks.

Sorry I didn't want to sound so harsh. My point was more that you have paid significantly more mana to roll 3 5-dice attacks than the other way around...
and my main problem lies is exactly that some heavy mana investments can be nullified by bad rolls(instead of smart countermessures such as nullify). And it is not like horribe gamechanging rolls happen once in a lifetime, more like every other game.

[sdougla2]

I don't think horrible game changing rolls happen to me every other game. Not even close. Every time I've lost a game of Mage Wars I've been able to trace the loss to poor tactical and/or strategic decisions. Most of the time what I see is that if the better player gets significantly worse luck than the other player, it takes longer for them to win, but they still win. If the better player gets relatively lucky, they win very quickly. Now, for some of the hyper aggressive builds, luck can player a larger role than for more economic builds, but for strategies with strong followups I haven't found luck to be the deciding factor in the vast majority of my games.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Boomfrog is right. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does it's more memorable. That being said, while it is quite rare, it doesn't seem to be quite as infrequent as once in a blue moon. There have been at least several if not a LOT of times that I've double fireballed or force hammered a treebond and the stupid thing survived.

[Moloch]

I specifically said "game-changing" not "game-deciding" 

As sdougla2 points out some strategys are much more "vulnerabe" to those occurences.
In strategy games like magewars I default to a controling strategy though I try to play everything in a while. As the controller you build up more and more small advantages and never let your opponent catch up again. If your enemy additionally looses a huge mana investment due to bad luck this strategy will make him feel that throughout the game which migth still take a while.

[krj]

many times it's just how people think about rolling. my friend likes to complaint on dices but in my opinion many times he is overreacting. i just take it as it is, once i have good roll another time bad., it's just the part of the game.  i think people likes to blame dices not thyself.

[Sailor Vulcan]

many times it's just how people think about rolling. my friend likes to complaint on dices but in my opinion many times he is overreacting. i just take it as it is, once i have good roll another time bad., it's just the part of the game.  i think people likes to blame dices not thyself.

Sure, a lot of people probably do blame the dice prematurely. I generally don't. Since as stated previously, these rolls are already pretty rare; losing more due to tactical or strategic reasons is significantly more common. So I look for those first.

But when both your opponent and you played equally well overall and you can point to a specific roll or rolls after which everything started going downhill...I would say that's a sure sign the dice rolls had something to do with that outcome. I don't know how rare it is, but it is at least fairly rare. It's rather frustrating when it happens though.

In fact, there was at least one player I've played against who had a highly improbable series of unfortunate dice rolls throughout the game, and also claimed it was typical for them to lose because of bad rolls. Of course, knowing mage wars, this is REALLY unlikely. It is more likely that the game they played with me was an outlier, and their tactics/strategy was a bigger factor in their previous losses.

[krj]

if players "played equally" luck will be  the factor, that's obvious

about this topic. it's interesting idea, but i would rather not mixing two solutions (static rolls and  dice rolls). i would go one way or another. you can assume that one die is 1 hit, and every 2 dices are critical hit. so if your attack would be 3 dices you have 2 normal + 1 critical damage, and if you have 4 dices attack it will be 2 normal + 2 critical dmg. i think it's more solid solution than mixing rolling dices with not rolling. i know it can change value of some cards, but if you want to reduce randomness you can think about something like that. I'm going to stay with Akiro's favour!