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I really like the new system.

127 (35%)

Better than before, but more needs to be done.

93 (25.6%)

It doesn't make a difference to me.

41 (11.3%)

The changes don't really address my issues.

6 (1.7%)

I don't like it at all.

35 (9.6%)

I have mixed feelings on the matter.

61 (16.8%)

Total Members Voted: 362

[Tarran]

As for the latter part, I'm trying to say that while before you'd have to spend a lot of time in micro to make sure only your legendary miners dug into that platinum cluster, possibly even having to wait to train up a legendary miner, now there is little reason not to dig into a cluster as soon as you find it.

Personally, before I actually start caring about rare minerals, all (usually 2) of my miners are very high in rank. I tend to like to go overboard with things before I should.

What I've been trying to say is that maybe you should give the randomness a shot.  It might not be as bad as you expect, and if it is then we know Toady's not finished with mining yet.

I've been messing around with randomness for a long time. There's this whole sub-sub forum called "Roll To Dodge" which has games with randomness down to the core which I frequent. And I've played plenty of Roguelikes and recently Civ4. Those are where I gained the pessimistic attitude. They all have quite a lot of randomness.

[NW_Kohaku]

I played 40d and I certainly don't remember ever thinking 0.31 minerals were overabundant; especially since the default mineral scarcity is 2500 and 700-800 is what gives a 40d style embark. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the entire reason the mineral scarcity setting was added in the first place was that people overwhelmingly thought that minerals were far too uncommon and that the severe lack of them was crippling their ability to play the game in a way that they want. Not to mention that it was a fairly common complaint that it was easier to find adamantine than iron since you were now guaranteed to find it with the proper map settings while the latter cannot be said for iron.

Beyond that, the 40d spread was far superior not only in terms of the amount of minerals one could find but also the variety. As is, the tendency is still to wind up with a vast host of metals that are largely useless for military matters. I've had plenty of 0.31 forts where I could pave the surface of the entire planet with gold bars and probably three or four forts where I actually found iron.

You're thinking of post-0.31.19 mining, when the scarcity went back in (which is that point where people complained about scarcity I was talking about).  When 0.31 first came out, you could have virtually every mineral in the game on a single embark. You'd have to set the lowest possible mineral scarcity settings to get the kind of mineral densities we had in early 0.31. I remember opening your first cavern would involve having 20 pages of "You have struck <mineral name>" messages.

Besides which, not having every mineral in the game in any given embark was basically the whole point of the scarcity changes, as it's meant to be paving the way for a need to actually trade for specific materials. 

[NW_Kohaku]

I've been messing around with randomness for a long time. There's this whole sub-sub forum called "Roll To Dodge" which has games with randomness down to the core which I frequent. And I've played plenty of Roguelikes and recently Civ4. Those are where I gained the pessimistic attitude. They all have quite a lot of randomness.

Actually, I've written some pretty extensive rants on the topic of randomness in games before.  (Surprising, I know.) 

There are ways to use randomness that are better or worse when it comes to specific styles of play.  In some games, what I would call "Candyland-Type", you have essentially no control over your destiny because the RNG is the ultimate arbiter of your destiny.  You don't really have much strategy in a game of Monopoly, you just have to hope you land on the best properties first, and never land on Boardwalk with hotels.  There's no point in thinking or planning in a game like this, as you have no power or control.  It is fun only for those (usually very young) players who want to win without skill, as completely random games will let anyone win an even number of the time.  A Chess-type game, however, has no randomness aside from what the players are thinking.  These games favor forethought above all else, as without randomness, you can plot out and predict the permutations and consequences of every move to the limits of your mental capacity. 

With that said, there are two very different types of mixed-randomness games - Card-type, and Dice-type. 

Dice-type games let you choose optimal strategies and try to stack the odds into your favor, but it's ultimately up to luck whether you succeed or not, and there's little point in planning more than a few moves that rely upon luck ahead, as you have almost no clue what the results of any given action will be.  These are, notably, most tabletop RPGs and games that rely upon dice.  They discourage planning, and enjoy making everything rely upon the fact that at any moment, a failed saving throw can make the best plans completely moot, and the dumbest lucky actor a winner.  They tend to frustrate players who like to play strategically, because it makes strategy fairly pointless if whether or not you can even move to the position you need to be a matter of dumb luck.

Card-type randomness, meanwhile, often forces random events onto you to which you must react.  This means that you have unpredictable events happening to you, but where the results of your actions will always have predictable results.  Games like the original Avalon Hill Civilization board game (IMHO, Sid Meyer's Civilization is not as good a game) will have you expand your populations, move them, build your cities, and then randomly give you trade or disaster cards, which you can then trade with and try to resolve those disasters in the manner that harms you the least.  You can expect, in an average turn, to lose three cities a turn when it really gets going, so you can always just make yourself prepared to build three or four cities the next turn to compensate. 

Card-type randomness is often superior because it injects a randomness that makes the game less utterly predictable, but at the same time, makes every player choice actually matter and makes them fully in control of their destiny, even as random events are forced upon them.

DF has the fortunate tendency to often have card-type randomness (Except for, unfortunately, combat, although you have so little choice in combat to begin with that it's almost Candyland.  It's part of why I dislike much of the combat in this game.) and in the case of mining, just consider that you weren't guaranteed those minerals you mined beforehand, either. 

Until you actually revealed that mineral you wanted, you didn't know it was there.  It could have been more solid granite wall, for all you knew.  It was a card-type randomness that you actually drew the mineral you want in the first place, and now that you have the chance to draw a boulder of that mineral, it's really like drawing a card from a special deck.  Sure, it may not work out, but you are still in the random phase.  When you actually eventually do get a lucky roll, there are no other forms of randomness forced upon you. 

Unlike Sid Meyer's Civilization, there's no chance your battleship is going to get sunk by a barbarian bowman.  What you do with the minerals when you get it have little randomness (excepting the dice-type randomness of quality, although that is rarely all that important)

[Drawde]

Hopefully we will also see a return of area-based cave-ins that coincides with introducing real mining concepts like longwall and retreat mining.

Not likely, given that open caverns would then collapse.

[Kestrel]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I've been messing around with randomness for a long time. There's this whole sub-sub forum called "Roll To Dodge" which has games with randomness down to the core which I frequent. And I've played plenty of Roguelikes and recently Civ4. Those are where I gained the pessimistic attitude. They all have quite a lot of randomness.

Actually, I've written some pretty extensive rants on the topic of randomness in games before.  (Surprising, I know.) 

There are ways to use randomness that are better or worse when it comes to specific styles of play.  In some games, what I would call "Candyland-Type", you have essentially no control over your destiny because the RNG is the ultimate arbiter of your destiny.  You don't really have much strategy in a game of Monopoly, you just have to hope you land on the best properties first, and never land on Boardwalk with hotels.  There's no point in thinking or planning in a game like this, as you have no power or control.  It is fun only for those (usually very young) players who want to win without skill, as completely random games will let anyone win an even number of the time.  A Chess-type game, however, has no randomness aside from what the players are thinking.  These games favor forethought above all else, as without randomness, you can plot out and predict the permutations and consequences of every move to the limits of your mental capacity. 

With that said, there are two very different types of mixed-randomness games - Card-type, and Dice-type. 

Dice-type games let you choose optimal strategies and try to stack the odds into your favor, but it's ultimately up to luck whether you succeed or not, and there's little point in planning more than a few moves that rely upon luck ahead, as you have almost no clue what the results of any given action will be.  These are, notably, most tabletop RPGs and games that rely upon dice.  They discourage planning, and enjoy making everything rely upon the fact that at any moment, a failed saving throw can make the best plans completely moot, and the dumbest lucky actor a winner.  They tend to frustrate players who like to play strategically, because it makes strategy fairly pointless if whether or not you can even move to the position you need to be a matter of dumb luck.

Card-type randomness, meanwhile, often forces random events onto you to which you must react.  This means that you have unpredictable events happening to you, but where the results of your actions will always have predictable results.  Games like the original Avalon Hill Civilization board game (IMHO, Sid Meyer's Civilization is not as good a game) will have you expand your populations, move them, build your cities, and then randomly give you trade or disaster cards, which you can then trade with and try to resolve those disasters in the manner that harms you the least.  You can expect, in an average turn, to lose three cities a turn when it really gets going, so you can always just make yourself prepared to build three or four cities the next turn to compensate. 

Card-type randomness is often superior because it injects a randomness that makes the game less utterly predictable, but at the same time, makes every player choice actually matter and makes them fully in control of their destiny, even as random events are forced upon them.

DF has the fortunate tendency to often have card-type randomness (Except for, unfortunately, combat, although you have so little choice in combat to begin with that it's almost Candyland.  It's part of why I dislike much of the combat in this game.) and in the case of mining, just consider that you weren't guaranteed those minerals you mined beforehand, either. 

Until you actually revealed that mineral you wanted, you didn't know it was there.  It could have been more solid granite wall, for all you knew.  It was a card-type randomness that you actually drew the mineral you want in the first place, and now that you have the chance to draw a boulder of that mineral, it's really like drawing a card from a special deck.  Sure, it may not work out, but you are still in the random phase.  When you actually eventually do get a lucky roll, there are no other forms of randomness forced upon you. 

Unlike Sid Meyer's Civilization, there's no chance your battleship is going to get sunk by a barbarian bowman.  What you do with the minerals when you get it have little randomness (excepting the dice-type randomness of quality, although that is rarely all that important)

I concur.

Additionally, DF's combat system is, despite its depth, about as screwy as any of the Civ game combat systems, ie Apache Helicopter downed by Apache Bowman, vs Bronze Colossus beheaded by Fluffy Wambler.  In DF's case, I think it's totally defensible and adds to the difficulty/unpredictability of the game.  In Civ's case, it's enough of a problem that I'll never ever play another Civ again.  Ever.

[King Mir]

Very happy with the change. No need to assign poor miners to dig out rooms. I suspect that reduction in stone won't be enough to stop stone from being an over abundant resource, though.

[Tarran]

I disagree.

...That's all you're going to say? Really? Not even why or what you disagree with?

[Arkenstone]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

DF has the fortunate tendency to often have card-type randomness (Except for, unfortunately, combat, although you have so little choice in combat to begin with that it's almost Candyland.  It's part of why I dislike much of the combat in this game.) and in the case of mining, just consider that you weren't guaranteed those minerals you mined beforehand, either. 

Until you actually revealed that mineral you wanted, you didn't know it was there.  It could have been more solid granite wall, for all you knew.  It was a card-type randomness that you actually drew the mineral you want in the first place, and now that you have the chance to draw a boulder of that mineral, it's really like drawing a card from a special deck.  Sure, it may not work out, but you are still in the random phase.  When you actually eventually do get a lucky roll, there are no other forms of randomness forced upon you. 
[/quote]
This is what the real point is.

[spoiler=On a more philosophical note...]

[spoiler]
Card-type randomness is often superior because it injects a randomness that makes the game less utterly predictable, but at the same time, makes every player choice actually matter and makes them fully in control of their destiny, even as random events are forced upon them.

DF has the fortunate tendency to often have card-type randomness (Except for, unfortunately, combat, although you have so little choice in combat to begin with that it's almost Candyland.  It's part of why I dislike much of the combat in this game.) and in the case of mining, just consider that you weren't guaranteed those minerals you mined beforehand, either. 

I concur.

Additionally, DF's combat system is, despite its depth, about as screwy as any of the Civ game combat systems, ie Apache Helicopter downed by Apache Bowman, vs Bronze Colossus beheaded by Fluffy Wambler.  In DF's case, I think it's totally defensible and adds to the difficulty/unpredictability of the game.  In Civ's case, it's enough of a problem that I'll never ever play another Civ again.  Ever.

Actually, it's that random because it's got so much depth.  In real life, battles tend to be decided by who gets lucky first; skill is merely the ability to make more opportunities to get lucky, while denying them to the enemy.  And if an Apache 'copter were ever pitted against Apache warriors, I'd actually put my money on the redskins.

I'd also disagree with how you classify card vs. dice-based randomness, as it seems to me that the distinction is in how well-done and balanced the randomness is, rather than a fundemental difference (as in sampling with or without replacement).

[NW_Kohaku]

You might want to edit your post, Arkenstone, you forgot a /spoiler tag in there.

I'd also disagree with how you classify card vs. dice-based randomness, as it seems to me that the distinction is in how well-done and balanced the randomness is, rather than a fundemental difference (as in sampling with or without replacement).

It's not about balance, it's about when the randomness takes place. 

Dice randomness takes place after the player has made their decision.  Card randomness takes place before a player makes their decision. 

In DF combat right now, you're given a list of body parts you can swing for.  You have a vague idea of how likely you are to hit or how much damage you will deal, but you have no real control over the results other than deciding what chance you want to take.  That's dice-type randomness. 

It's like when you make a skill check in D&D and have to roll to see whether you complete the jump over the chasm or fall to your death.  You don't know until after you've made your decision, and it makes success or failure feel like just luck.

Compare this to a card-type randomness, like you will get out of a game of Magic: The Gathering, or some other CCG.  The deck is random, but once something is in your hand, you have a huge degree control over everything that will happen with that card when and how you play it.  The only random factor is in what your opponents are playing. 

The difference here is in how the player gets the chance to react to the randomness and develop their strategy after the randomness has taken place. 

(Incidentally, the fact that "critical chances" or whatever they're called in DF combat occur before the player decides makes this a case of card-type luck in the middle of combat, which is mostly dice-type luck.)

Consider how an RPG game like D&D would be different if, instead of rolling to find your successes, you drew cards that you had to play in order to get through the random portions of your turn.  Your cards may be good or bad in a given turn, but you'd have to choose to play your cards on whether you were focusing on offense and playing those random cards on having better attack "rolls" or on defense and subtracting it from enemy attack "rolls".  You would know ahead of time that if you played all your good cards on completing a jump that you would then have no more good cards for the next set of skills you were required to play, and as such, it would be a game more about trying to strategically play your random cards than just making a calculation as to how much of a risk you were willing to take and hoping you got lucky.

There's a major difference in how satisfied players will feel about one type of randomness over the other - if the player feels that the other side just got lucky, they may feel cheated, or that their actions didn't matter (which is the prime complaint here, actually).  If a player feels that they were simply outwitted when the other side played a better hand than they did, then they're more likely to be satisfied even with a loss.

[Martin]

The difference here is in how the player gets the chance to react to the randomness and develop their strategy after the randomness has taken place.

I'd suggest using a priori randomness and a posteriori randomness.


Typically in games, a posteriori randomness is high in balanced situations, and your goal as a player is to narrow those odds of failure as much as possible through skill trees, training, equipment, or strategy. It never goes to zero, but it can get sufficiently small.


One challenge I've found with the card games like Magic is that then are more likely to put the player in unwinnable situations. In D&D, you always have hope that you'll roll a string of 20s.


Getting the balance right is really difficult. With a purely deterministic system, if you don't have the cards, you might as well give up. In a purely random system, you're powerless to influence the results. The game needs to give you initial conditions that aren't so easy or hard that they predetermine the outcome no matter what decisions you make, allow you to tilt the odds through effort, but never fully eliminate the possibility of success or failure.

[Arkenstone]

Ah, I see.  I get what you mean by dice-based vs. card-based randomness now.

However, I must protest at your conclusion:

There's a major difference in how satisfied players will feel about one type of randomness over the other - if the player feels that the other side just got lucky, they may feel cheated, or that their actions didn't matter (which is the prime complaint here, actually).  If a player feels that they were simply outwitted when the other side played a better hand than they did, then they're more likely to be satisfied even with a loss.

This is but one way of viewing things.  Mine are closer to the opposite: I feel more as if my actions are futile when I've been dealt a bad hand, whereas win or lose I enjoy the thrill that comes with that one die roll that represents the culmination of all my efforts.  I highly doubt I am the only one to have this view, just as I'm certain there are also people who enjoy and who loathe both kinds of chance in their games.


EDIT: Listen to this man, he knows what he's talking about.

[Mitchewawa]

As far as I'm concerned, the only thing the new changes do is remove some lag-inducing clutter. I still get the same amount of rock blocks, and I still get the same amount of ore. Nothing I can dig is so rare that I need to worry about not getting enough, on the odd chance that I do not get a stone every four tries.

This is also a bit of a nerf to rock crafts, I assume.

[NW_Kohaku]

I'd suggest using a priori randomness and a posteriori randomness.


Typically in games, a posteriori randomness is high in balanced situations, and your goal as a player is to narrow those odds of failure as much as possible through skill trees, training, equipment, or strategy. It never goes to zero, but it can get sufficiently small.


One challenge I've found with the card games like Magic is that then are more likely to put the player in unwinnable situations. In D&D, you always have hope that you'll roll a string of 20s.


Getting the balance right is really difficult. With a purely deterministic system, if you don't have the cards, you might as well give up. In a purely random system, you're powerless to influence the results. The game needs to give you initial conditions that aren't so easy or hard that they predetermine the outcome no matter what decisions you make, allow you to tilt the odds through effort, but never fully eliminate the possibility of success or failure.

Those terms work, too, but I'd still have to explain them to most people.

While it's true that you can get into unwinnable situations in card games - I play hearts and spades and bridge, and know that sometimes you just have to suck it up from time to time and try to keep your opponents from getting too far ahead of you on a deal that gives you a bad hand - there's also the fact that your success or failure in those games often feel determined as much by your choice as it does by the hand you were dealt. 

If you are in a nearly unwinnable situation in D&D, and you need something like 15 natural 20s in a row to survive an encounter, if you win, it was nothing but luck, and you'd know it.  It means you failed as a player just as badly as if you'd lost fair and square.  In fact, I'd rather lose at that point, generally.  Worse, it means that the rounds you should have won you will occasionally lose through no bad decision of your own. 

Granted, my own opinions on this matter are not universal - games like Candyland still exist for a reason, and some people prefer pure randomness with basically no skill that lets everybody win some of the time because they aren't looking for a challenge.  (I'm looking at you, Mario Party...)

However, the ways in which randomness are presented to the player are a major factor in how the players perceive the game, and it's something that any game designer needs to keep at the front of their mind when they design their games.  Some gamers are fine with a looser type of randomness that can dominate gameplay, but some want to feel more like they are playing chess, and will perceive randomness that makes a good strategy fail in spite of doing everything right as the reviled "Luck-Based Mission". 

[Arkenstone]

If you are in a nearly unwinnable situation in D&D, and you need something like 15 natural 20s in a row to survive an encounter, if you win, it was nothing but luck, and you'd know it.  It means you failed as a player just as badly as if you'd lost fair and square.  In fact, I'd rather lose at that point, generally.  Worse, it means that the rounds you should have won you will occasionally lose through no bad decision of your own. 

And those moments, when you succeed (or fail!) despite all the odds, are what legends are made out of.  They're always what sticks with you the longest, even when you've forgotten about everything else.

Granted, my own opinions on this matter are not universal - games like Candyland still exist for a reason, and some people prefer pure randomness with basically no skill that lets everybody win some of the time because they aren't looking for a challenge.  (I'm looking at you, Mario Party...)

What it seems to me is that you're having a hard time believing that there exists a rather large proportion of gamers who enjoy neither high strategy nor utter chance.  Which is understandable; we all have trouble understanding how anyone could like what we don't.  But take our word for it, it exists even if you can't see it.

[NW_Kohaku]

Granted, my own opinions on this matter are not universal - games like Candyland still exist for a reason, and some people prefer pure randomness with basically no skill that lets everybody win some of the time because they aren't looking for a challenge.  (I'm looking at you, Mario Party...)

What it seems to me is that you're having a hard time believing that there exists a rather large proportion of gamers who enjoy neither high strategy nor utter chance.  Which is understandable; we all have trouble understanding how anyone could like what we don't.  But take our word for it, it exists even if you can't see it.

What part of "my own opinions are not universal" comes off as "I don't believe other people have different opinions"?