Free strategy and draft videos at www.ChannelFireball.com Dr. Richard Garfield discusses "Luck Versus Skill" when designing games aboard the 2012 Magic Cruise in a bonus episode of the "Magic TV" weekly series.
You can see and hear that he knows what he's talking about. I don't care that it's not slick and smooth, it just makes it more real to me. People who make smooth presentations often lose a certain reality or honesty in their presentation. It seems to me that the presentation, it's looks and the person who does the presentation, are perhaps more important than the message given.
At 5:13 and 5:29, a guy makes a remark about "cutting off a guy's thumb", he seems like he just want to show off how smart he is for finding an exception to the rule....I bet that guy plays blue.
@@KulaGGin Clash royale gameplay itself is fairly non-random, your initial card cycle has a bit of an affect, in some matchups more than others, but overall it was honestly a fairly well realized concept. Obviously they went ahead and made it pay to win and garbage which completely ruined it, but I wouldn't consider rng a huge factor in clash royale, especially compared to paper card games like magic. It's possible you are mixing this up with battle royale games which are entirely different.
I agree, but he didn't say Smash was a high luck game. He said it had more luck than the games he brought up before. Also, I think he means it has more luck based on it's basic rules, not based on the luck reducing rules.
He obviously hadn't given the talk in a while, but once he figured out the topic of each slide, he gave a lot of his own background knowledge so I think it was a good talk.
I never knew much about Garfield, but after he mentioned Counter-Strike and Starcraft in this, my respect for him grew exponentially. He knows his shit.
I'm curious what Dr. Garfield would have to say about the potentiial of time ranking competitions to normally single-player tasks, such as Sport Stacking, Rubicks Cube, or Legend of Zelda Speedruns, to be considered Orthogames?
Just had a thought, rather than randomized back ranks as in Bobby Fischer chess, why not have players go back and forth choosing where in the back rank pieces go? It could work where black chooses a piece and places it on the back rank and white mirrors that piece then white chooses, going back and forth until all pieces are placed. This gives an advantage to black (though how big that advantage is, who knows) in that they get first pick, which is nice because white gets the first move and has an advantage from that. Or, it could be made more luck oriented by randomizing the order of piece choice. I bet this has been explored. It could lead to extremely interesting strategic decisions before the game even starts and there would be a really interesting meta game. For example, one player could be trying to get their rooks right next to each other for some crazy double rook strategy they know and their opponent would have to realize this is happening and counter act it by putting the rooks far apart.
Love how they created this lore around the power 9 so carefully. Like Benne Gesserits in Dune they implanted myths to they own convenience. And it did great to everyone, they cashed tons for their great game, they introduced mythic-power level card at the very begining, even if they have to do something about them later on. Very much like the lore of Lord of the Rings, were older means more powerfull and closer to mythic proportions. Damn even the early god mistakes and later interventions to fix them are related here. So the flavor is enhanced Great mind and great video. I would give one of my fingers to play some magic with this guy haha
He prepared himself. He created a game with almost 20 years of legacy, profits ranging mil to bil. I think creating Magic 20 years in advance to this lecture is a lot of preparation time.
Woah. This guy is smart. I want to sit down and discuss things with him. "Complexity is luck" is something that most people refuse to agree with me about. I guess the designer of Magic: the Gathering probably has to have a very deep understanding of probability and such.
be thankful that you get to even listen to this. Yeah, audio is poor, probably just because person who was recording it isn't technical and he just pressed record button on whatever camera he was using.
I'd like to see anyone of these posters make a better presentation. None of his ideas were lost when he stopped to think (He probably didn't reherse a casual presentation very much...) they just slowed down at some points, his ability to communicate a message was in fact above average even compared to trained public speakers. Despite what your schools have taught you the core of a strong presentation is not the ability to speak elequently and lack stuttering, it is the ability to communicate.
I saw a video of him playing and some comments were talking about "it's a shame the creator is so high on his money hill he doesn't play anymore, no wonder he lost" (when he was mana screwed playing Finkel), and I'm going "you know he helps design every other main expansion, right??"
eh, i disagree. It seems more genuine, like he's just a guy having a conversation instead of some peppy looking guy you would never meet in real life is spraying out words at you.
twisted fate - well managing luck is a skill in itself which is a foundational gameplay element in MTG so having luck is not all bad in that way. the problem is if there are elements just not under the control of any player that would determine a winner at random.
The element of luck makes Magic more interesting and the gameplay more varied, of course it sucks when a player doesn't get to play their cards but that's just part of the game getting hosed for mana happens, on the other hand skill is important, you can often win by playing the cards at the right time and in the right order
something i'd like to add about inovated players and honing players is that people change. i for one like to come up with new concepts and play them till i can perfect a strategy because i can see potential in cards; however, when new things come around i have to convert, but still attempt to maintain originality. i enjoy games like magic where you can have a variety of different options that all work if you adjust accordingly.
That argument at 3:50 is looking at the situation the wrong way... Yes, it has the same skill as chess because you have to read the same books and learn the same stuff and all that, but where the difference is, is that the skill you've worked on for years does not matter as much as it usually does. Say you're a great chess player with a 2500 ELO and you play against some significantly weaker one, with a 1500 ELO, and in a normal game you would win almost 100% of the time... Now, you will only win 83.333% of the time, because when the die roll 1, you lose. If the rule was that a 1 or a 2 makes you lose, now you'd only win 66.666% of the time. 1-2-3 you lose? 50-50. There is no skill, the game is only luck. 1-2-3-4 (or 1-2-3-4-5 or 1-2-3-4-5-6)? Now it's in your best interest to lose the game, but it's almost impossible to lose a chess game on purpose, so every game would be drawn. If you notice something, is that yes, while you have to learn the same strategies and all that, the more luck elements you add to the game, or the more significant are the "luck" impacts, the least it even matters. If you spent 10000 hours learning chess and play against someone who has played 5 games in his life and never studied the game, you are going to crush him almost 100% of the time. In the same situation but you roll the "1" die, you only win 83%. 1-2 die, 66%, 1-2-3 die, 50%. So even if you spent a lot of time playing, learning, studying, training for chess, it matters less and less because more and more often, the luck factor makes you lose the game regardless of everything else you did. And THIS is what people hate, and THIS is what people mean when they say that luck is opposite of skill; Because the more luck you add, the more relevant it is, the less relevant skill is. It's the same in every game. Critical hits in RPGs and FPS games often make a player win a fight he was about to lose. Random effect in card games often cause turnarounds and the player who played best loses the game. He spent 1000 hours playing that game and is much better, but it didn't matter because something out of his control played against him. If a first person shooter has rockets dealing 90-100 damage, sometime luck will come into play. If you both have 200hp and you're the best player, you might still lose because if your rockets deals 90 you need 3 of them to hit your opponent, and he might kill you with 2 high damage rockets. This won't happen a lot though, so skill will prevail most of the time. When you are at 150 hp it'll always be 2 rockets too, so it's all skill. But when there's a critical rocket that activates by luck 5-10% of the time, now you can lose the fight on 1 rocket and there's nothing you can do about it. So your skill is irrelevant 5-10% of the time, when he gets the crit. If the crit rocket happens 50% of the time, now even less skill, more luck. In a card game, if a card has deals 1 random damage, sometime it'll be impactful because it'll kill a minion you won't be able to use to trade or deal damage with. But most of the time it's not THAT damaging. But if it deals 10 random damage, now it'll almost always kill a minion or a hero, randomly. Now it's REALLY damaging, games will be lost/won constantly due to that random effect. Which means that all your skillful decision up to that point won't matter at all, if the card is played. Again, more luck means skill is less relevant because often your skill won't have matter at all when the game is done. Bottom line : No, luck doesn't mean there is no skill involved (poker is the good example, over the long run the best players always win). But it means that skill is less relevant, especially over the short run, and this is another thing that makes it frustrating : Most games are all about the short run. If Phil Ivey (one of the greatest poker player) plays 1 million hands against you, he will probably annihilate you and take all the money you have to your name. But if he plays 1 hand of poker against you, your odds are pretty much 50-50. His great skill doesn't do much, pretty much the only tool in his arsenal is to trying to raise you aggressively to bluff you. That's the only thing he can do, because you only have 1 hand and 50% of the time you have the best one. Most games people play are more similar to that "1 hand of poker" than they are to that "1 million hands" scenario. You don't get to experience the long run, just the 1 game, then another "just the 1 game", and so on, so when you lose 1 game due to luck, then win the next one due to luck... It feels like everything is decided by luck, and when you improve you don't really win THAT much more, becasue the luck still influences the game the exact same way no matter how good you become.
You´d described exactely what i feel when i play modern competitive video games, such as PUBG, CoD, Blackout or Street Fighter! The more I train the more I feel that my workout does not make any difference. And eventualy im quitting.
I think you never actually tried learning poker. Real skill of poker players is maximizing wins and minimizing losses. Every hand is just that, 1 hand. You win the showdown because you were lucky to have better hand, and lose because you had worse. Skill is in recognizing your chances and betting accordingly. So I'd say poker ain't a good example.
@@user-un-known I played over 1 million hands of online poker. I won't pretend to be great or anything, but yes I did try to learn, and I think I know 'what it's about' quite well. But after 5 hands or after 5 million hands, the short term variance is still a pain.
@@newpgaston6891 OK, so you know poker. You stating it's a 50/50 if only 1 hand is played made me think you know nothing about it, but ok. It's still a terrible example because it is not a short term game to begin with. No matter the variant you play, each hand is completed within minutes. Even seconds if it's online. When people say let's play poker, they don't mean let's play a hand or two, because that would be too short. So the short term volatility of hands you get is part of the game to begin with, and is to be expected, and is to be accounted for. A chess game is long. Unless you play bullet. Or online blitz. Which in turn would mean more games would be played, and it wouldn't be as frustrating to lose on a dice roll. You still win more in the end. People get frustrated losing to a chance thing if the time to get there was long. If one trained for a year, and then lost to a dice roll at the end of an hour long match without matches to compensate? They'd be furious. But in poker? Train for a year and lose by bad luck on a single hand that took 20 seconds to play, with 100500 more hands waiting to be played? Not a big deal. And if you go all in on the very first hand and lose... You ain't playing the winning strategy anyway. Sure, sometimes you're forced to go all in with suboptimal hand because if you don't you'll be busted by antes, but hey, it's still your play that got you in that predicament. And you knew that cards could just not line up for you for a long time when you started. Again, volatility and chance are part of the game, and no one plays poker for just a couple hands. If they're trying to win, that is. For fun? Sure. All in, lose, buy in, all in, lose, buy in, all in, lose, and say that's enough for today? Can happen. But you ain't aiming to win. You just wanted to see if you get lucky right now, and never expected it to work anyway.
I don't quite understand one thing when you say "Luck is when you can't predict the outcome of something, like shooting dice. But you can predict that in a fair die a number like 6 is going to come up 1/6th of the time. Similarly in quantum mechanics you can predict things with probabilistic nature. Just because Heisenberg's uncertainty principle exists doesn't mean we can't make probabilistic predictions in physics. Where am I going wrong here?
MTG really fucked up by not throwing a lot of money at developing a decent version of MTG on PC. They could've created hearthstone type game in early 2000s. Magic online was/is a disgrace.
Yes I felt and still feel like that. I mean just look at him as soon as a new screen appears: He stands there a few secons, makes "aaah" and then repeats what's on the scree, eventually with a variety...
It would be SO MUCH FUN to play DUPLICATE Magic The Gathering !!!!!!!! imagine a tournament where at all the tables the decks are stacked the same way and you just compare the results to get the very best players regardless of the deck you pick or the luck you have
38:50...definitely chapin talking about double face cards (DFC). I'm sorry though, it's one of the most fail mechanics in the game. The primary reason being that most cards just did not have to be DFC, there wasn't enough to them to justify it. And in the end, we're left with people playing cards that just don't look like Magic cards (checklists). I liked the honesty though about knowing that some cards would be problems, but if it was a problem, it was a good problem because they made $
Luck is more fun because it brings excitement. Thus a broader audience has interest. But to be honest it can also be frustrating depending on how luck is implemented in the game. In MTG if mid/late game you start top decking mana multiple turns in a row, this is not fun and frustrating, all for the sake of "variance." Which in my opinion poor design. A lot of players will cope this flaw is calling it "variance" due to their bias towards the game they love and heavily invested their time and money in. Such scenarios should be decreased (two sided cards mana or creature/artifact etc as it has been done in the past, lots of scry and variants of scrying) and luck can be applied in other areas. Luck in the form of top deck wars should be replaced with a different form of luck for the reasons Richard Garfield went over. When people lose a game they should not feel like they lost due to something out of their control. Similarly to chess, they should feel like they made a mistake somewhere and that they could do something better next time.
at around 26 min into the presentation he says that without luck it is hard to find equal players. but nowadays with the internet, mtga and a ladder, you do not need luck to find equal players. so that makes today a great day to reduce luck in mtg even further! :)
Can you imagine if Innistrad hadn't been released yet and he accidentally gave away the name of the set? But he's Richard Garfield so I'm sure Wizards would have forgiven him.
I desagree, they introduce more aspects in which skill takes place. No use having miracles if one cannot use skill to acess them as playable or not nor have the mana to do it nor can build a deck around them to make them work. Hexproff takes away one aspect of removal which one must take into consideration when deckbuilding and preparing against. Cavern effects already existed for a long time and having tribal reaping it's benefits doesn't hurt control, it just makes the game more complex.
I think you misunderstood what I said. I said that luck+skill = 100%; that means exactly that you can never nullify skill if it's present, because you have to subtract its relevance from 100%. If you roll the dice 99 times at the end of the game to determine the winner, you would have 99% luck and 1% skill, totalling 100%. The more you roll the dice the less the skill you need to win this modified version of Rando Chess is relevant; i.e. what is not skill is luck and what is not luck is skill.
I came here to say exact same thing; I felt he kept the rando-chess to 1/6 so people would think skill's role was not reduced, whereas if it was 5/6 they might question it a bit. It's true in one sense the skill required to play well is still the same, but the *importance* of skill to the end result (i.e. determining the winner) is clearly reduced. Similarly for Poker, when bots compete each other heads-up (i.e. official AI competitions), they have to play billions of hands between each pair of AIs because the luck factor is so high, it often drowns out real differences in skill. There definitely is skill involved, but luck trumps skill. Another way of considering the relevance/role of skill is depth of players (i.e. max elo difference between beginner and top pro). I do see some merit to his perspective though... are you adding luck to an underlying-deep or shallow game.
If that was true, then there would be a point where you could completely nullify skill from the game by introducing more luck. This is not the case with rando-chess. If you change the game to add more luck to it, you would still need to have skill at the chess portion to win more often than a player with less skill. Yes, the more luck that is added, the closer a skilled player's win:loss would approach 50%, however, it will never break that boundary. The skill factor will always come into it.
15 and a half minutes in and im tired of him flipping his slide show as if its for the first time actually reading what is on the slide show is he just nervous or ill prepared?
V sent me also. in yugioh they added way too much luck way too fast so i have at least temporarily converted to magic. magic's a great game though and i can't imagine breaking away lol
