Pokemon's one of the biggest properties. People are ok with randomness.
What are those things called...IVs? The unique Pokemon identifiers? People hate that stuff. Since we're all talking about randomness, I'm going to have to talk about random-positive and random-negative, two ideas I have to help separate good and bad randomness.
Smash with items would be fun but they'd have to be more stringent with which ones were usable than they would with say, stages. There are items that aren't overpowered but still give tools to characters that didn't have them before and wouldn't be overpowered if they were random.
It would be cool. I like items, personally.
what runes you get are random. Hero damage is a range so it's also sort of random. Some skills I believe are also a bit random. Mainly ogre magi's ultimate. Also I guess in a way team makeup if you are playing casually
There are a ton of random elements in DOTA 2.
*Damage ranges are random. This is most prominent when you are trying to last hit a Catapult that is being hit by tower, in early game you are at the mercy of RNG as far as getting that last hit.
*Creep camp spawn is random. For junglers they can have a great start or a mediocre start depending upon creep spawns.
*Roshan randomly spawns after being killed with a certain time limit. It used to be that he spawned at a very specific time but recently they randomized that spawn time.
*Rune spawning are random and they can make the difference between a Mid lane win or loss. 50% chance of them spawning top or bottom then there is additional RNG on which Rune you get. There was this match where the mid QOP got 8 DDs in one game and steam rolled (this was at TI3 not some pub game).
*Many heroes and items have random abilities. Daedalus, MKB and Basher have powerful random procs. Axe's Counter Helix is random. Chaos Knight's whole character design is based around RNG (stun is random, crit is random even his pull is random) as is Ogre Magi. There are some internal cooldowns in place to "minimize the randomness" but all things considered it's still really random.
*Characters who are up hill will have an advantage because ranged attacks have a chance to miss against them. This is also a RNG based mechanic.
I'm going to focus on Runes, because Runes are a good example of random-positive. I'll contrast it with tripping, which is random-negative.
Random-positive definition: a reward which was earned, but that varies in strength. A baseline expectation is created to ensure a modicum of reward. Anything above this baseline is a bonus.
Random-negative definition: an effect which occurs without any input from the players involved. It just happens.
Random-positive examples:
Runes
"Crit" damage in DotA.
Jungle creep spawns.
Hsien-ko item stun.
Random-negative examples:
Tripping
Phoenix Wright item selection.
Rune Analysis:
When a Rune is collected, you receive a baseline reward: a rune has been controlled. The enemy side was deprived of the resource, and it now belongs to you. If you have a bottle, which most roamers do, then even better. Even if it is just illusion (talking DotA1 context here - sorry), you still get an asset that can be useful in the team. You are not
counting on invisibility or double damage. If you get either of those, it's just a bonus to your reward. Regardless of the reward, you still had to control the space necessary to gather the rune, and the runes are on a strict timer, removing the random element from the base reward.
Basically: when randomness provides a periodic additional benefit for an
earned state, then I call it random-positive, and it can actually add to the game. The opposition, when affected by the results of an opponent's random-positive, may be irritated that the proc occurred, but they will eventually justify it by knowing that the state was still earned. In other words, they might be annoyed that someone got double damage in DotA, but they will also know that if they had controlled the rune, that situation would have been prevented.
Tripping Analysis:
There isn't much to say. You can trip at any time for no reason at all, and you're fucked. Technically, you can control the probability of tripping by staying off the ground, but that is much like saying you can avoid bad Wright items by not gathering items. Ground movement is essential to the game. Two memorable tripping memories for me: one time, it happened immediately as the round started. Bam. All I did was tap forward. A second time, I tripped right into my wife's smash attack, killing me. Realistically, I had no way of knowing this event was going to occur, and I suffered for no real reason. This is a frustrating experience for me as a player.
For abilities with a damage range, the lowest damage range is the baseline: it's what you plan for and can expect to happen. To use Chaos Knight as an example, when you throw his bolt, it stuns for 1-4 seconds. When you throw the stun, you are really only
counting on one second to happen. You just need that stun to happen right there. If you get more than 1 second, then you are happy. If you get 4 seconds, you are elated because random-positive weighed in your favor. You
aren't angry that you only got 1 second, or at least, if you are, then you are playing the wrong character. Some people like random-positive more than others. Personally, I can enjoy Chaos Knight a lot, but I love characters with guaranteed results better, like Earthshaker and Zeus.
This week's thread title was buttcheeks. Changed.
Abuse!
If Chris, Champ and Justin aren't playing each other, the match is too low level for me to really enjoy. Granted, I do still like watching Chris steamroll people with Morrigan, but even that has its limits
RayRay is seriously getting up there. I think he's a contender to win next year. I agree, though. We need to reconsider the gods, and at this point I would make it just those 3. Flocker's performance was really weak this year, and PR Rog has clearly fallen out of practice.
