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Comment by BigJono | Hacker News Reader

I think this is partly the reason games like Rocket League, League of Legends and Counter Strike are doing so well these days. They're just pure team-based competitive games where the only things that affect the outcome are the rules of the game, the game's physics, and the skill of the players.

There are very small elements of luck, just enough to stop the games from feeling sterile or unnatural, but nothing big enough to decide the outcome of a match without being completely overshadowed by the strategic decisions leading up to it.

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This idea is covered really well in Richard Garfield's book Characteristics of Games.

The metaphor he draws here is what he refers to as the skill chain. Each link in the chain reflects the point at which the player on the lower link is unable to defeat the player on the higher link above some small percentage. The longer the chain the more skill is rewarded by the game.

However this has a downside for an online game that isn't as popular as the ones you mention, you will be unable to find interesting games without having to wait for a long time for the correct opponent to appear. And it makes matching up well against your friends less likely.

Randomness can be used as s tool by a skilled game designer to shorten the chain and allow for more player to compete with each other. It also gives the player an element outside their own weakness to blame when they lose and that can make the game more enjoyable.

So it's something pro players tend to dislike but is typically accepted as the price of having diversity of skill in the player pool. (Poker vs chess for example)

This is only somewhat true. Most shooters rely on the concept of a shot pattern - that where you place your crosshair is only statistically the center of where your shot will land.

This is actually exactly what real life shooting is like. There is RNG in the process.

What a developer CAN do is control just how tight the shot pattern is. One example is to have a wide shot pattern when the player is standing, tighter when crouched, and really tight when prone. Or use an "iron sights" mode for tighter aiming.

But in real life you can tighten your shot pattern with practice

I've just started playing CS:GO, in that you can tighten your shot pattern with practice too -in a different way. Continuous bursts spread in a predictable trend (a different trend with different weapons), shot interval feeds in to spread as a multiplier.

I've not worked out yet whether higher rank/XP and health status (HP) are also factors on shot spread and the progression of spread under continuous fire?

League of Legends originally had a lot more luck elements, but they wisely phased out those uncertainties over the first couple of seasons.

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