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Comment by alanfalcon | Hacker News Reader

“Humans are bad at understanding probability, so lets make it impossible for them to get better by lying to them and reinforcing their poor internal model.”

(I know games are ostensibly about fun rather than betterment, but they originate from the opportunities for betterment that they provide and breaking that connection does a disservice to ... mankind. Not to put too fine a point on it. If you want your game to be fun and the numbers aren’t fun, don’t lie about the numbers, change how you present them.)

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I agree. If 85% is not fun, make it 90%. Don’t try to change what 85% means. If as a game designer, you’re finding that random isn’t fun, maybe you ought to consider dropping the randomness and coming up with something better.

It’s not that 85% isn’t fun. It’s that when someone misses an 85% chance 5 times in a row they go on the review boards screaming about how the game cheats.

Any idea what's a better system then? Over 80% is guaranteed? After the first attempt your chance of success doubles?

For example, you'd want it to be pretty much guaranteed a trooper can beat an alien at close quarters with a chain gun and an archer can't beat a helicopter. You want some degree of randomness but you want the rules to be easily understood as well.

I’d prefer documenting the actual behavior/rules. In the Civ example, if the 3rd try always succeeds, display 100%. If the archer vs helicopter attack doesn’t make sense, show 0%. I’m a big boy, I can take the truth. If the monsters run slower when you’re not looking at them, find some sensible way in the story to explain it. Maybe your eyes feed their rage and give them powers when you look at them.

Giving the player an artificial boost when he’s behind is like giving 4 outs to the losing baseball team.

> If the monsters run slower when you’re not looking at them, find some sensible way in the story to explain it

Most games are suppose to feel like an experience though and make you feel a certain way. They're suppose to be scary monsters - less so in a Civ-style games but you're not suppose to be decomposing them into integers and algorithms.

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