An argument about RNG and addictive behaviour

"... designing a game that exploits the science of human behavior (addiction)...thus a nearly entire game designed around RNG."

I came across that argument on another forum - it is thought provocative, but i wonder.

Is it an omen that the gaming industry, like everything else in this world these days, has been corrupted my materialism and lack of morals to a degree where there is no distinction between right and wrong and gain(ego memememememeMEFIRST) is the alpha and omega of deciding what form products should take?

RNG is ultimately neverending carrot - that is what it is. It is hope that it can happen, while shrouding the practical reality and always hinging things on "maybe i could get lucky".

I wonder what you other gamers think - when is enough RNG enough?


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I'll quickly go into my own current stance. I imagine a counter argument where you say that a game without RNG is in no way interesting/fun - and i would agree. I would then think me one that loves to farm neverending in a game and really truly love that. If i was that - i would not actually be playing for the end-rng itself, but rather for what it supports. Don't get me wrong, there are many places you can find neverending RNG but the reason i wanted it would be because of the gameplay of the actual game, and i'd be looking for a game where there were always things and improvements i could be grinding - RNG would be a requirement but the game itself would be the heart, the skills and items.

What i am trying to say is.. the lines are very blurry, rng is required and even one such as i would get bored with a game when there is nothing more to farm.

However, i am very interested in the link between addiction and rng. It did strike me because i have come to understand that PoE is one game that is very good for gaming addicts and not so good with those who are more normal in their behaviour - and it is heavily loaded with abusive RNG. In short, i have found the RNG --> addiction link many places, even to such extend that i question the morals of the gaming industry in using rng so liberally. I am also very aware how tempting it is to study addiction and create a game to ensure success by playing heavily into addiction - but it would be morally wrong. Still i feel the industry studies the addictive aspects of whatever and considers it the pinnacle of achievement in their lack of moral guidance.

I fear that is it psychologically unhealthy to use it to a great degree - especially when it substitutes actual content which is life giving in that it will inspire you - fighting rng will be a void zone. Art and new things inspire, there is deep quality in it as the result of the energy put into creating it whereas rng is a loophole that gives nothing but drains in the long run.

I will bring it back to saying that average joe will not pierce the mystery instead he will conclude that whether it is right or wrong depends on the person. But understanding is not like that, morals are tied to our psychology and what patterns are healthy or not and even if someone agrees to partake in unhealthy patterns by themselves it will not change that the underlying pattern is unhealthy - hence we have a general moral saying that some things we don't do to others unless they ask for it. Again, nobody forces you to buy a game so we are already morally safe there, aren't we?

Then we go into discussions of public goods(per literal meaning of words not economic definition), of how you have a responsibility for the imprint you leave on the world, and how when placing your product out there to tempt others you are responsible for its patterns of interaction with randoms and the effect it will have on them...

Etc etc.

But i feel like something is not healthy - too many games bind people with RNG but there is no goodness underneath its just a fight against barren RNG and when you realize it you break free.

Ahh back in the days when we sat with a modded version of Diablo 2 to spam a jewel to reroll until we got a perfect ruby jewel of fervor 15% attack speed 40% enhanced dmg. We sat 2 guys nonstop for hours spamming that shit till we got it. Freaking RNG, that is one mystery that is hard to pierce.

I don't think is right to talk about "RNG" as a general concpet. Gambling is the addictive part and a sub-set of "RNG", specifically designed to make the player wanting to pull the slot machine lever over and over. In PoE, you don't get addicted to "RNG", but to all the gambling mechanics in the game.

Random tileset / map / mob generation = not addictive
Random drops / crafting / rewards = addictive

if ingame rewards were given linearily according to playtime, mostly unemployed, kids and the rich would really play because those are the groups with most the time while occasional players with a stable income would be left out and getting nowhere if there is no diminishing returns on the playtime invested.

the random outcome of things is one of the easiest implementations of diminishing returns.

One way RNG is addiction inducing is when tied to items and scaling effectiveness balance system. Because it creates a perceived reward (see SkyCore's post) through 'increased' difficulty requirement for higher stats.

i.e. Difficulties and resistances in PoE. Difficulties progressively lower your resistances. Items have higher potential rolls on resistances with drop level. Damage is balanced around you have maximum resistances.

Effectiveness scaling is crap imo.
It is designed to have you either feeling impotent or overwhelmed at all times. There is a fine line where combat can actually be engaging and skillful without being repetitive. If evasion is not possible then it leads to stat checks. If you can avoid everything, you end up with consistency tests.

Randomizing elements like maps and enemies can be one of the best ways to improve replay value. But only if those elements impact gameplay in a significant way. Often in PoE the maps layouts make little difference to combat, and most enemies are 1-2 shot, trivializing the randomness of them outside of aesthetic novelty. Contrasted to a game with wall scaling and enemies that require 1-3 decisions to kill.



*Made more sense of it.

my usual argument about games and rng goes like this:

take poker and chess

both are popular games. both are enjoyed by many

in one (chess) its purely skill based. you can have fun and a balanced game, but it has to be on your skill level. you will not, ever beat a grandmaster chess player unless you're a grandmaster yourself or you feed him LSD and hes thinking you're riding an octopus when you castle

in poker, at game theory optimal strategy, its also a game of skill. still, the game is quite random due to its nature so short term you can have a lot of wins even though you play your hands like crap and suck out. long-term, you will be a loser, but short term you can win a lot of money

both type of games are acceptable and fun on their own. obviously, the one with more RNG (poker) is more addicting. the allure of winning big while not putting in a ton of time attracts degenerate gamblers and gamblers in general. there's a reason jackpots are popular.

if you remove randomness from poker, you're left with optimal strategy that once figured out you can employ regardless of your cards. for example, texas limit hold em was solved heads-up last year. meaning, there's a definite optimal strategy that one can employ for each card combination, stack size, position and each street.

removing RNG from games make them either puzzles or skill games. FPS twitch games are skill games. puzzle games are combat-y tactical rpgs where if you figure out a solution, you're good all the way.

problem with games becoming puzzle games is that once you find and verify a 'close enough' to optimal solution, which is more than polynomially easier than to find all solutions, you basically can play the rest of the game in such way. it becomes boring and predictable and replayability tanks. imagine playing heasd up limit hold em where all the moves are predictable. its boring.

RNG artificially bloats the replayability of many games, as well as provides enough variance to provide variety to defer from comfort zone of close enough optimal solution instead of putting yourself in cruise control.

now, the main problem is really people not knowing how to handle RNG. people hate to 'lose' to RNG but take 'wins' for granted. people also feel entitled to having shit in games (this ALWAYS gets me) even if the probability is tiny.
know your probabilities, and approximate your risk/rewards. a good poker player doesnt get too mad he just lost his whole buy-in to a one-outer dumb call. he knows long-term he will profit off dumb calls.

I think grepman is the closest to getting it.

Games are about players making choices. However, this doesn't occur at a single time; instead, games use feedback loops where past choices modify current situations, thus modifying current choices.

For any one choice, randomization that occurs prior to choice and that modifies the weighing of choices in the current situation is a game design good; it adds depth such that playthroughs differ and a variety of situations are considered. However, randomization which occurs after that choice is, within the context of that choice, little more than a probably math problem; the ideal play is the one which has the best net chance of victory.

As I said earlier, games aren't about single choices, but several choices woven into feedback loops. Ideally, a great deal of randomization is front-loaded into the initial gamestate, as that modifies all later choices; ideally, randomization is not relied upon for the final choice, instead using other gameplay factors (ex: reading one's opponent in poker).

The key phrase in the above is: "that modifies the weighing of choices." Randomization that fails to influence the weighing of future choices, even if it occurs prior to those choices, is slot machine RNG. It creates the bad kind of addiction because it fosters the illusion that this situation is new and different, while in reality changing nothing that matters and keeping gameplay stale and predictable. It's a type of RNG which causes us to lie to ourselves about the strategic depth of our own play.

I would argue that ARPGs tend to be mostly slot-machine RNG. A surprising amount of most ARPGs is an "on-rails" experience with linear progression and nonrandom boss design, making most randomization irrelevant. I think randomization of monster and map affixes is almost entirely good (and their lack of randomization, "white mobs," a missed opportunity), but the design of unique items as build-around-me objectives only encourages players to brute-force pulls on the lever until the desired outcome finally occurs, with little change to gameplay.

It's also worth noting that rewarding some map affixes more than others, in combination with a player-controlled reroll system, functionally limits the effect of randomization by encouraging unrewarding affixes to be overwritten, functionally limiting the randomization potential of maps actually run.

RNG is peripheral to the addiction of games. The key component to the endorphin release (addicting feeling) is perceived reward. Whether that it is real money, in game money, in game advancement, or general perceived mastery of the game (which in itself is a reward to many). In addition to 'discovery'.

I reached a point in chess where i learned almost all the basic tricks and had strong strategy. But at that point i realized to get any better at the game would just be largely memorization of partial board states. In essence, experience. That isnt the game i wanted to play. Why? Because it felt like it was 'play to win' similar to 'pay to win'. Regardless of my relative intelligence or inventiveness, i would be beat by people whom simply played more. Perhaps that is largely true for ANY game, but in chess it seemed overtly obvious. I dont know, maybe i simply reached the point where i felt where i wasnt getting enough 'reward'. My mastery stopped rapidly increasing.

In guild wars (the original) i became the highest ranked gladiator (4v4 random arena) in the world largely because of my experience and my ability to meta-game. I knew what was popular, and brought tools to counter them. Unlike chess, there was no drop off in reward. Every match i won, i felt satisfaction for making the right decisions. And there was ample design space for making novel skill sets and testing them. 3.9750027e+17 possible permutations to test, if each permutation took 1 second we would need the lifetime of the universe to test them all.

And that discovery of new design space i think is essential to maintaining an addictive game for myself. Not RNG. Not infinite advancement (although it certainly helps). But something to occupy my mind.

"

SkyCore wrote:

Spoiler

RNG is peripheral to the addiction of games. The key component to the endorphin release (addicting feeling) is perceived reward. Whether that it is real money, in game money, in game advancement, or general perceived mastery of the game (which in itself is a reward to many). In addition to 'discovery'.

I reached a point in chess where i learned almost all the basic tricks and had strong strategy. But at that point i realized to get any better at the game would just be largely memorization of partial board states. In essence, experience. That isnt the game i wanted to play. Why? Because it felt like it was 'play to win' similar to 'pay to win'. Regardless of my relative intelligence or inventiveness, i would be beat by people whom simply played more. Perhaps that is largely true for ANY game, but in chess it seemed overtly obvious. I dont know, maybe i simply reached the point where i felt where i wasnt getting enough 'reward'. My mastery stopped rapidly increasing.

In guild wars (the original) i became the highest ranked gladiator (4v4 random arena) in the world largely because of my experience and my ability to meta-game. I knew what was popular, and brought tools to counter them. Unlike chess, there was no drop off in reward. Every match i won, i felt satisfaction for making the right decisions. And there was ample design space for making novel skill sets and testing them. 3.9750027e+17 possible permutations to test, if each permutation took 1 second we would need the lifetime of the universe to test them all.

And that discovery of new design space i think is essential to maintaining an addictive game for myself. Not RNG. Not infinite advancement (although it certainly helps). But something to occupy my mind.

I think the frivolity of perfect turn based strategy can be summed up with tic-tac-toe.

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I find good PvP action skill games even more addicting. Because you are also getting shots of adrenaline. Though eventually the adrenaline stops coming and you have to either play longer or experience some really challenging scenario to keep triggering it. Could probably liken this to PTSD.

Also in terms of something heavy execution based like a FPS there is a maximum level of skill you can achieve (essentially a tempo based aimbot). If you look at any FPS game, all the best players taper off around the same point of accuracy with each weapon. I have achieved this myself in TF2.

I felt I had mastered spy with standard revolver. I could kill any player one vs one with any class, regardless of skill level. I do not really comprehend this, but I felt like it took a lot of my brain space to store all those scenarios and aiming techniques. So it left me with a similar conclusion to yours with chess. I felt I had reached this ideal state of TF2 play, but it left me kind of detached from reality. Like I had sacrificed real world skills to achieve that level of play.

I was doing some reading about chess masters and some of them play games without a board, remembering the location of every piece. They have even had tournaments for this and records held for simultaneous no board games played. One of these guys had a stroke soon after one of these events. Source

This got me thinking about how games you play impact your mind... How much resources do they require? I mean some of us are putting more effort into games than we are into our jobs. This is a point where I think RNG games might have an advantage because they usually require a lot less effort on the players part.

I have adopted a new approach to gaming since though...

Rng allows the low investment players to enjoy a piece of the cake.

Which is why i always find it laughable that such players suggest changes to the fundamental RNG nature of PoE.

It's like somebody pointing a gun at their own feet and going "ill fucking shoot i tell you, ill do it"

Rng is still bound by fundamental rules, and people are given the tools to manipulate RNG.

Peace,

-Boem-