So anyway, I’m looking for decent X-Box 360 games (might make another thread on this later) when I see their “Family Fun Night” selections and a Monopoly game…Monopoly Streets, IIRC. Classic board games, now conveniently on a platform where you don’t have to worry about missing parts or remembering rules.
There was a time when if I thought a game might be a keeper but wasn’t sure, I could rent it, but with Blockbuster Video all but dead now, that’s no longer an option. Anyway, I think Mousetrap, Sorry, Monopoly et al might be good. There’s just one thing…
Do any of these games (not just XBox 360, I have them all now) allow you to use your own die or spinner or whichever, then enter the number manually?
Wait, before we continue, I’d like to say that I have lots of experience with random chance rolls in games, particularly RPGs, and that there are two possibilities:
The rolls are biased against the player, whether accidentally, by design, or outright cheating.
The rolls are completely fair.
NEITHER is acceptable to me. I’m sick of luck and chance and randomness and whim and chaos. I don’t have time for that anymore. That’s why I became such a huge fan of music games. That’s why I deplored the nightmarish mess the unlock system for Dance Dance Revolution Universe was. That’s why I spent many, many happy hours devising and testing combat and number selection systems for the Lone Wolf books that didn’t involve dropping a pencil blindly onto a grid of numbers. (I rejected the first three ideas for combat. I was serious about this, folks.) Heck, that’s part of the appeal of Assassin’s Creed to me.
I mean, think of the possibilities. You could recreate games on the console. You could test out all kinds of scenarios. Heck, why stop there, allow you to completely set up a position and play it out; every chess program I’ve ever had allows this.
See, what everyone who makes one of these things needs to understand is that having the dice or spinner in hand, solid, tangible, that means a lot. And if the system is allowed to take that away, then not only does this set the stage for all kinds of cheating allegations which can’t be readily disproved, but the game really loses something. There’s a reason no one’s tried to sell a computerized craps game; it’s just not the same without an actual table and actual dice and a bunch of rowdy rollers shouting “Come on seven!” and “Daddy needs a new pair of shoes!”
Look at Blood Bowl. Need I say more?
P.S.: Please, nobody play the “hardcore” card. The only console games less hardcore than a flippin’ board game adaptation have a fast food mascot on the box.
Not only did you leave out option #3 (Which, I can assure you, is fairly widely used in the game industry) namely: Rolls are biased IN FAVOR of the player, because people have more fun when they win, and get frustrated when they lose, so even perfectly fair randomizers can make people crabby, but you haven’t really provided any sort of reasoning I can grasp for someone to create the feature you describe.
Not only does it do the opposite of what you suggest with regard to cheating (rather than trusting an impartial device to generate the numbers, you are letting people put in whatever the heck they chose, completely unverified.) but the other “advantages” you list seem sortof strange. While I can appreciate the value of being able to set up the “playing field” however you want, you rightly note that this feature is only really present in Chess games - which, you will note, have no random elements - I find my mind boggled by the idea of someone wanting to do this in Monopoly (My opponent owns Boardwalk, but not Park Place, and I roll an 8…) - or any other game driven as heavily by chance.
I’d go so far as to argue that removing the random element from these games essentially turns them into entirely new games - maybe that’s your objective, but I’m reasonably sure the owners of the properties aren’t really interested in supporting that.
And finally, I would venture that no one has tried to sell a computerized craps game, because it’s not actually a good game, or any fun without money on the line.
Maybe if you’d elaborated more on your point about Blood Bowl, I’d have grasped what you are going for, but I guess, fundamentally, the answer to your question is “No, no console game allows you to do that.” with the added color commentary of “And at the moment, I’m still not sure why you’d want them to.”
These two statements do not work together. Die/spinner/card (d/s/c) draw are elements of some games that are based solely on randomness. You can’t have d/s/c without randomness. And if you’re plugging in your own numbers, you’re taking out a chunk of the gameplay.
Airk mentioned chess, also checkers, Connect 4, mancala, or even Twister are games more about strategy, than luck.
Airk - Hey, bud, as far as I’m concerned, if having no problem whatsoever with the BCS as long as your alma mater benefits is an acceptable position over here, so is having some leeway in a game I’m dropping forty bucks on.
If you have a list of these games where the randomness favors the player, I’ll be happy to give them a look. (I’m thinking fighting games, sports, action/adventure, shooters, etc.; I don’t really have the chops for RPG or turn-based strategy.)
Computerized poker and slot machines have a long history, so there’s certainly some market for simulated gambling, but you do have to admit that it loses something without the ambience.
As for Blood Bowl, the fact that just about everything depends to some extent on luck is almost certainly why it just never caught on. Yeah, there were plenty of allegations of biased rolls in the original P&P, but you can prove that a die isn’t loaded. Kinda tougher to do that with a random number generator.
stpauler - Gamefly, huh? First I’ve heard of it. I’ll go look it up when I have the time.
And yes, what I’m proposing would make the game radically different, but y’know what, that’s what options are for. If you want to keep things completely up-and-up for online play and that big party coming up, fine. You can’t tell me that no one’s ever wanted to do something like this.
hogarth - Yeah, that’s what I figured after several days with no responses.
Eh, no biggie. It’s just entertainment. I’ll always have P&P. Maybe give Blood Bowl a try, what the heck.
Anyway, I’m not arguing that you shouldn’t have choice in games, but I am arguing that it’s not in the interest of people who make games to make games for, ah, extremely small audience sizes.
I don’t have one - it’s not the sort of thing people publish, and even if they did, I think you misunderstand - they don’t “weight” the entire random number generator “towards the player” (Truthfully, I’m not really sure what that would even mean, since in general, single player games aren’t designed to use the same rules for the player as they are for the AI opponents - the exceptions that I can think of being…well…board games.). They adjust the probability of particular actions succeeding or failing. Drop rates of items on quests, blah, etc. The example I remember was from an MMO, where the drop rate on quest items actually INCREASED as you got more of them, to prevent a streak on the RNG making the last item feel like it was taking forever.
But:
Fighting games generally don’t have randomness. At least, not the one-on-one vs variety of games ala Street Fighter or Soul Calibur. Well, I suppose they probably use some randomness to determine their AI behavior, but that doesn’t exist for purposes of challenging the player so much as just “making the AI not do the same thing every time.” Otherwise, these games can pretty much be considered extremely fast versions of chess - everything that happens is based directly on the actions of the players. I don’t think “brawler” (aka “sidescrolling beat-em-ups” like Castle Crashers or Double Dragon) type games feature much randomness either.
Sports games I can’t vouch for, but since most sports have a bunch of statistics involved, I suppose it’s possible that they utilize those. Seems a little unlikely though, unless you’re dealing in a “sports manager” style of game.
Action/adventure, again, is pretty deterministic - if you do the same thing over and over, you’ll get the same results.
Shooters, well, FPS games may have some randomness involved in AI behavior, but otherwise, I can’t think of much. Maybe ammo drop rates? Topdown/sidescrolling shooters are virtually completely randomness free in most cases, and even when it does crop up, it’s more like “Sometimes you’ll get a wave of enemies coming in from the left at this point, and sometimes you won’t” - again, a way of introducing variety into static game patterns rather than directly influencing your “success”.
Come to that, really, RPGs, TBS games and computerized simulations of traditional games are the only “video games” I can think of that really use random number generators with any frequency. And even then, a lot of RPGs have been eschewing randomness in favor of mathematical formulae.
I would argue that computerized poker is mostly popular as a way of playing against other people when you can’t get there in person, and that computerized slots are really only interesting, much like computerized craps would be, when there is money on the line. I don’t think people have any interest in “playing” computerized slots for no cost and no payout.
Well, actually, all you need to do is keep track of your “rolls” over time and see if they conform, within the standard for error, to what they are “supposed” to be. But I’m forced to ask the question again - how would the game designers benefit from building a skewed random number generator? The objective of most (I say “most” because there are some artists out there who have objectives that have little to do with entertainment, but you’ll know those games when you play them, and they probably don’t have a random element) game designers is to build a game people enjoy, so they recommend it to their friends, etc. How would building a skewed RNG that causes frustration for the player serve that end?
No, I can only tell you that no one I know has ever wanted something like that. Maybe I travel in strange circles, but well, to me it seems almost like “I’d like to play Rock/Paper/Scissors, only, without rock.”
Wait. I thought you hated random number generators, and so were trying to avoid them, and now you’re saying you want to play a game that you earlier in this very post asserted has “everything based on luck to some extent”?
I remain confused about the objective of your search.
