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Well, if that's your definition of "skill", that's fine. It still fits the model.

Indeed this is my definition of skill (broke down of course, it comes after knowing rules and distances and listbuilding and odds and so on).
Then why do you explain, that luck will have a lesser impact on a highly skilled level (based on my definition of skill) with your model stating that the games will be decided by dice rolls?
I read a clear discrepancy here or I got you wrong.
I would say that luck will dictate the casualty ratio and not the game result. And the casualty ratio is unimportant. Even in kill point mission.
20 marines can be made out of 4 killpoints or 2 and 16 dead marines to 5 dead marines can result in a 1:0 win for the player with 5 dead marines.

Lets have another example:

My first VASSAL game vs Dash (as far as I remember).

10th Keldonia vs his Orks.

2 objectives, I tank shocked him out of my objective with a perfectly secure tank shock. S3 vs AV14 DOG attack -> no dice
I moved onto it then -> no dice

so far so good.

to his objective, I had to run with my stormtroopers in order to contest it (assuming that the game ends afterwards) and failed by 0, whatever ", game ended, so we tied -> dice involved.

so your model says:
Dice decided. I had to run "better" and I would have won. If the game continued I probably would have lost. (I dont remember the odds about the roll to run and the game end roll actually...)

I say skill mattered. If the difference in skill between us were greater, the better player would have won.
And dice only came into consideration because we were

1. (in this game) Quite equally skilled.
2. (In this game) Not skilled enough to be independent from them.

My lack of skill was not getting a unit into a perfectly safe striking position, so I had to make a very unpredictable action in order to have a possible victory and I did not guard my objective for the next turn.
His lack of skill was his fail to secure his objective properly from those guys and he wasnt able to contest my objective for this turn.

so it was a "correct" result with a dice element in it, because we werent perfect.

So your assumption is: Our luck must have been equally good/bad in order to have the game tied? I actually dont remember how dice worked during the game. It simply didnt matter. We both had our plans and both failed because of imperfection, not because of "failure" of dice.



Now back to my opinion about luck being subjective.

You connect luck to dice rolls, is that so?

OK lets say, I roll 3 meltaguns. 1 vs a Leman Russ front armour, 2 into a blob.

One melta vs blob misses, the other one that hits fails to wound.
The 3rd melta destroys the leman russ.

so we have about average rolls in total (not loaded dice at least)
So the guard player will claim most likely that the opponent rolled well.
He will forget about those "unimportant" guardsmen and will only keep in mind the good result against the leman russ.
And he will forget that it were those 2 guardsmen that secured the objective that could have been dead.

The same works the other way round. You remember rolling below average but forget rolling above.

This leads me to the assumption that the importance of specific dice rolls will differ.
Therefore it leads to the logical decision to avoid important dice rolls in order to have a secure gameplay.

This is the reason why I think that less risky play means higher skill and the less the risk, the less important the dice.

-> dice impact will be reduced the higher the player skill is.

I think the chart would better is it said the "disparity of skill" and not just "skill".

If I'm super skilled, and my opponent is incompitent than luck, even the most extreme, is really not that important.

Then if the disparity in skill was truly zero (which it never will be) then luck is very important. Whether everything in between is an even slope or some sort of exponential graph I guess is up for debate.

But one thing is for sure, the world is going to end if we don't get this mathmatical graph about toy soldiers 100% right.

-Nazdreg- wrote:What would be the result? Draw wouldnt it?

Not likely. If he had moved into better firing lanes, or blocked off the objectives to keep Dash outside of 3", or tied him up/finished him off in assault, or tank shocked... there are too many what if's to declare the outcome, all we can say is that his opponent failed to play the mission to prevent Dash from winning. Now it may have been his intent to go for the Table rather than play the mission (fairly common in tournaments), but to not recognize what was happening to the point that you lose an objectives game 3-1? Not good.

Swiss system mitigates this problem a lot:
First game -> random
every game after first: 1. vs 2., 3. vs 4. and so on
in the course of 5 games the first random one will be a kind of irrelevant.

I disagree. Even at a 30 man tournament you're only playing 16% of the field in a 5 round match. At 150, you're playing 3% of the field. When list building to the the meta is a large part of the tournament scene, that guy down there at 25th might clean the clock of the guy at 1st. With no 'season' to match players on a winning percent of the course of the season or any other standardized matching system, declaring someone a winner of an event that only played a small sliver of the participants is inherently flawed.

This is true to a certain extent. It is also expensive to travel to many different tournament locations in order to be present in the community.
But there are possibilities to move around it a bit. (Borrowing models/armies, driving together with other guys to reduce costs there...)

Borrowing models is going to depend a great deal who you play with, as well as how long they will let you borrow them so you can get comfortable with that army. One of the places I used to play had an extremely..mm.. uptight? community. The Organizer disqualified a Cassius model because it didn't have the right pistol, and an entire space wolves army because the grey hunters were not modeled with bolt pistols, CCW AND Bolter.

They are, however options. All to often though you see two basic groups of people at tournaments, the 'normal' list guys, who have 4, maybe 5 vehicles in their army total (most of the local SM players have nearly identical lists consisting of 2 rhinos, dakka pred, vindicator, dreadnaught), and then the guys that have like 6 raiders, 4 venoms, and 3 ravagers. To no one's surprise, the top tables are going to consist of the second group far more often than the first.

I disagree. Even at a 30 man tournament you're only playing 16% of the field in a 5 round match. At 150, you're playing 3% of the field. When list building to the the meta is a large part of the tournament scene, that guy down there at 25th might clean the clock of the guy at 1st. With no 'season' to match players on a winning percent of the course of the season or any other standardized matching system, declaring someone a winner of an event that only played a small sliver of the participants is inherently flawed.

Yes it is flawed, but imho not ridiculous. Top players stay top players and bottom players stay bottom players. The midfield will be influenced by matchups, yes.

Not likely. If he had moved into better firing lanes, or blocked off the objectives to keep Dash outside of 3", or tied him up/finished him off in assault, or tank shocked... there are too many what if's to declare the outcome

But those what-ifs you presented do not involve luck. So it is up to the players skill. If he is a better player than Dash then most likely he will win , if he isnt, he probably wont win.
So if they would be identically skilled the most likely result would be a draw.
Dice can bend it a bit in one direction, so we get maybe a 12:8 instead of a 10:10.

-Nazdreg- wrote:But those what-ifs you presented do not involve luck. So it is up to the players skill. If he is a better player than Dash then most likely he will win , if he isnt, he probably wont win.
So if they would be identically skilled the most likely result would be a draw.
Dice can bend it a bit in one direction, so we get maybe a 12:8 instead of a 10:10.

So... what you're saying is that in a game with players of equal skill, luck is the largest determining factor

Dashofpepper wrote:
You've had 11 pages of reasons. Lengthy ones explaining *why* your theory is backwards. If you don't get it now, I don't expect you will.

Actually, of those comments from you in those 11 pages, the only reasons are based on logical fallacies. It's not that I don't get what you're saying, it's that I don't believe what you're saying is accurate.

So far, you haven't given a single convincing reason, despite 11 pages of talking.


Dashofpepper wrote:
I'm pretty sure there's nothing else I can add to this thread

Actually, you haven't really added anything in the first place. It's not to say that you can't, but if you're going to be a meaningfully positive contributor to something, then you have to stop only using fallacy to make your arguments.



Dashofpepper wrote:
According to the theory here, I'm either incredibly lucky or I've never played an intelligent person, because as skill goes up, luck is more important.

THIS DRECK HAS GONE ON FOR 12 PAGES?

Look I hate to say it, Ailaros, but it seems the person who has the most problems here regarding 'logic' is the person whos head is stuck up his predetermined @$$.

Why post a thread ASKING FOR OPINIONS - AND THEN CITE LOGIC?

And as far as luck/skill discussisions go, there are two people whose info is invaluable - Dash and Nurglitch.

"In my experience, there's no such thing as luck."-Obi Wan Kenobi (pimp)

I look at it like this
If 2 players have Identical skills, and an identically impossible to beat list, then sure, luck will be the winner of the match. But since that is impossible, no luck wont be the decider. Why? Because no matter HOW CLOSE 2 opponents are in skill and and how close their armies are to compare, one WILL be better then the other over the course of the game. Suer random lucky dice rolls have made me win/lose some games, but all my games? No way. Usually its just down to being out played. No matter how good someone is, they will make a mistake somewhere, and if there opponent is just as good, he/she will see that error and use it.

In my personal opinion, I think the OP is right in theory but is not right in practice.

The claim is that all things being equal the only deciding factor is dice, therefore, at its core 40k is not a tactically challenging game.

I would say that is only true in the very rare situation where both players, of equal high skill, both play perfect games with similar, if not the same, army. This situation in practical terms will never happen.

I think the OPs theory takes too much away from the Human Factor. Nobody plays perfect games, not Redbeard, not Dash, and most certainly not myself. Mistakes can and will be made, and mistakes can and will be taken advantage of.

The OP is saying that dice calculates the risks one does and luck determines whether that risk was successful. However, all good player minimize risk, sets up redundancies, etc. When you know you have something random like dice but you have a way to predict average results. calculated risks are part of the game.

I am not going to say that luck plays no factor. I have seen many of games played between good players (including Dash) come down to a few critical dice rolls. Players with the ability to make those critical dice rolls usually have an inherent advantage to those that consistently fails them, and no amount of skill will help you.

I guess, it comes down to your philosophy. You could apply this concept to life, how much does "luck" or "random chance" effect the outcomes of our lives. I know several people who always makes rational calculated risks but economy turns, or something unfortunate happens, and they are not as successful as the guy across the street who makes average decisions, but owns a fortune 500 company. Is life no more or less challenging because of luck? Can you say the same of a minatures game?

What makes 40k a tactically challenging game, especially at the top competitive levels, are the factors that you as a player can control. Your army list, the tools you bring to the table, board control, application of forces, moving properly in the movement phase to set up assaults or shooting that favors an overall battle plan. Making mistakes is part of that. You may over expose a flank, you may commit too much to a side of the board, and your opponent may be able to capitalize that. Yes, luck does play a factor in your ability to pull off your plan, but more often then not, most people loose their games because of poor choices they have made and critical dice rolls they have failed.

Both play an importance on this game, and both have to be taken into consideration. IMHO, 40k is still a tactically challenging game because it is still two people trying to juggle risks with limited resources.

Deadshane1 wrote:"In my experience, there's no such thing as luck."-Obi Wan Kenobi (pimp)

He cheats using the force

As for the whole debate.

You cannot deny that luck does exists, and when it goes extremely awry it can dominate the game more then skill. My experience has shown me that luck is a much much smaller impact on games then skill though and properly capitalizing on opportunities and the opponent's mistakes is far far far more influencing on the games outcome then a few dice rolls going bad here or there.

An example; Recent Tourny. Playing Eldar with my Tyranids. Dawn of War/Kill Points. My opponent's army stinks (5 reapers, 1 warwalker, 2 DA squads in serpents, Autarch w/10xWarp Spiders, 5 shining spears = 1500 points or so). He has a reputation as an "average" player, so he won't be doing anything tactically stunning with his force. So I setup expecting an easy win. I'll admit I played like crap which made an easy win into a tie, and there was some really really weird dice going around as well. Failed 4 outa 6 saves on my tyrant to warp spider fire...splat. 50+ rending genestealer attacks doing no damage to a warwalker and wave serpent. 24 Hive guard shots and 9 warp lances into a wave serpent doing nothing. DA rolling snake eyes on their break test after losing combat on the last turn to stick in against some stealers and a Trygon...etc. The opponent made the mistake of trying to kill my scary stuff instead of going after the easy kill points though, and I managed to get a few KP here and there and eek out a tie. Basically my opponent being bad enough that my poor rolling didn't matter.

I've found that in the closest games there are usually a couple of "critical rolls", basically events that will tip the scale of the game on a single or small number of dice rolls. That last turn run roll to snag that last objective, an important break test that could open up your opponent's lines, that critical volley of fire, an important armor save on an important character, a unit straddling table quarters (dash) etc etc. Basically the closer the skill level the more important these random events are as good players will exploit the hell out of them. Of course the way the game plays out overall determines when, where and how important theses situations come up. Some times you don't even realize when these critical rolls happen until a turn or 2 later or post game when you kick back and talk about the game and say something like, "Man, if unit X had of done Y the game would have been 100% completely different".

On the other hand, these critical rolls don't happen when there's a big skill difference, as you can cover some poor dice rolling with superior playing.

There is no such thing as "luck."
"Luck" is a concept created by pattern-seeking primates to understand variables that appear to be behaving in a consistent way incorrectly, over the short term.

"Good" or "Bad" luck is a subjective description based upon preconceived notions about perceived extremes of best or worst outcomes.

"Luck" infers some outside controlling force that tends to favor (or disfavor) despite individual needs for neutrality.

A real-life scenario: You are driving alone down the highway when you get a flat. You pull to the side of the road to change it. You might perceive this as "bad" luck. Further down the road, a boulder slides down a hillside and pulverizes the exact spot you would have been in if you had continued driving. It would have been considered "bad" luck to be killed thusly. Therefore, subjectively, the flat tire was "good" luck. However, the very next day after the flat, you are driving with your family when you make a mistake that kills your entire family. You can see where this is going...

40k is a game between two seemingly controlling players interacting with a seemingly static enviroment influenced by seemingly randomized factors, over a short term period.
"Good" or "Bad" "luck" rolling dice during this short term is purely subjective.
"Mistake" or "Mistakes" perceived to occur during this period are based upon preconceived notions of what is a correct or incorrect action at a certain point, based upon previous experience(s).

The winner, in this case of a 40k game, is the player that tends to make the correct action for the current enviroment more often than his opponent.
A so-called "high level player" is a person that tends to make more correct actions over a long period.

Deadshane1 wrote:"In my experience, there's no such thing as luck."-Obi Wan Kenobi (pimp)

I was sooo waiting for someone to quote old Ben from Star Wars......


OK, skill Vs luck, an actual applicable example:

The last time I battled with my buddy in WHFB, we did so with 3,000 points. He plays Wood Elves and I play Lizardmen. In Fantasy you roll for terrain, so you don't really get to pick all of it. We rolled it up, placed it on the table accordingly, and we then deployed our forces. The middle of the table was open, surrounded by woods and hills on each side. I marched up 3 units of mine through the middle of the table. 2 units of Saraus warriors and one unit of Temple guard. The temple guard were in the middle. He was holding back a unit of Treekin and a Treeman towards the middle as well. He decided to move the treeman into the woods on my flank because he can treesing and whatever else the wood elves do in woods, I dunno some hippie crap or whatever. So, I on purpose, marched up one saurus unit right up next to the treeman, so that if the treeman charged he would be stuck fighting that block for at least 2 turns, possibly more. Lizardmen hardly ever break, since they have decent leadership and are cold blooded.

He saw what I was doing, he saw that I was trying to block his treeman and tie him up for a few turns. So, he decided to get smart (or so he thought) and marched his treeman behind my units. So basically next turn he would have his pick of which unit he wanted to charge from the rear. I saw this and in my next turn I marched everything in the opposite direction, creating a very large gap between myself and the treeman. I also flanked my cold ones and my steggadon all the way back near his deployment zone, and that march move I made in the opposite direction but also towards his edge of the table made a huge gap between my units and the treeman.

In WHFB you must roll 2D6 and add your movement to charge. He rolled snake eyes on his charge roll, so the treeman failed and only moved two inches total. This allowed me to move again on my turn and create an even larger gap, effectively taking the treeman out of the game. My cold ones and stegadon charged the treekin to tie them up (they are actually tough as hell and I tied them up for several turns before he wiped me) and my other saurus unit and temple guard charged in for the kill on his archers, his eternal guard and his glade guard and it was game over before the treeman could even catch up and join the battle.

So, his bad move was a mistake. I capitalized on it. His bad dice rolls made his mistake even larger and I took total advantage of it. Had he rolled box cars (double 6s) his treeman probably could have charged my rear flank and stopped my units from advancing. However since he did not, and I created that huge gap he effectively took his own treeman out of the game. Now, he knew the risks and took them. Had his plan worked it could have changed the game, but it did not. He knew the risk versus reward situation and took that risk. It failed and caused him the game. Had he got better dice rolls, he maybe could have won (though wood elves are a very weak army and in dire need of a new book). So, this is a prime example of dice rolls, luck, and risk versus reward. High risk moves often do not pan out in your favor, which is why I usually never do them.

akira5665 wrote: Why post a thread ASKING FOR OPINIONS - AND THEN CITE LOGIC? the most problems here regarding 'logic' is the person whos head is stuck up his predetermined @$$.

lol

KingCracker wrote:If 2 players have Identical skills, and an identically impossible to beat list, then sure, luck will be the winner of the match. But since that is impossible, no luck wont be the decider. Why? Because no matter HOW CLOSE 2 opponents are in skill and and how close their armies are to compare, one WILL be better then the other over the course of the game. Suer random lucky dice rolls have made me win/lose some games, but all my games? No way

Mahu wrote:I would say that is only true in the very rare situation where both players, of equal high skill, both play perfect games with similar, if not the same, army. This situation in practical terms will never happen.

To reiterate a few things about this theory:

- it does not require players to be perfect.

- it does not require players to be perfectly equal in skill

- at no point does skill never matter (except with 2 perfect players, but I don't assume that will ever happen)

- the determining power of luck is based relative to skill.

Carefully read the theory again, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Well, you need to factor in also that as you go up in skill, you mitigate some luck as well. Of course, you cannot perfectly mitigate luck, but luck diminishes more too as you go up in skill. Your opponent also mitigates some luck, so some of the aspects of dice rolling go out the window. (e.g.: guys in a transport are immune to leadership tests, completely mitigating leadership, so those dice rolls cease to exist)

Also, I think my point still stands that as you and your opponent go up in skills, mistakes happen less and are smaller, but have a bigger impact at a higher level. This mitigates the "evenness" of less mistakes at a higher level, especially in an I go, you go setting.

I think you had that negatively sloping graph about mistakes tending towards zero as skill goes up.

The thing is, the impact of mistakes goes up also as your skill goes up. How much so and to what extent is debatable, but I think you should address that as well.

Also, what was the point of the original post? What is it that you take from the conclusion? My sense is that this is an attempt to try to prove that 40k is not a game of skill..not too disimilar to your old post that when you watch two good players, you don't see them doing anything special.

scuddman wrote:Well, you need to factor in also that as you go up in skill, you mitigate some luck as well.

I DO. You've actually been reading stuff on this thread, right?

scuddman wrote:The thing is, the impact of mistakes goes up also as your skill goes up.

And the impact of skill is RELATIVE between the two players. If you haven't picked that up as a core tenet of the theory yet, I don't know what I can do to make that more clear.

scuddman wrote:Also, what was the point of the original post?

Read the OP for the theory in brief.

scuddman wrote:What is it that you take from the conclusion?

The moral I've gotten from this, actually, is that the more equal in skill level you become to your opponents, the less you can take the game seriously in a tactical, competitive sense.

Given that there is diminishing return to more skill, this means that once you hit a certain level, the costs become enormous while at the same time the game continues to be determined more by luck than by skill, the further you go, and the better you get. This also means that the better you get, the less you can take the game seriously in a tactical, competitive sense, unless you're way better than your opponents (like Dash, for example).

This means, that in order to continue to have tactics as the core of my 40k experience means that either I need to whomp on worse players, or I need to change what is the core of my 40k experience, or I need to give up 40k for a game that doesn't have a random element involved. My particular choice of aesthetic has yet been determined.

And the impact of skill is RELATIVE between the two players. If you haven't picked that up as a core tenet of the theory yet, I don't know what I can do to make that more clear.

You haven't convinced me this is true. It might be a core tenet, but I say this is why it fails to match reality.

40k for a game that doesn't have a random element involved.

There are no games without random elements. All competitions have uncontrolled elements. Good luck with that. If your conclusion is how you feel about 40k, then I will point out that you will draw the same conclusions about all competitions. Even if you don't agree with me now, you will agree with me eventually.

Given that there is diminishing return to more skill, this means that once you hit a certain level, the costs become enormous while at the same time the game continues to be determined more by luck than by skill, the further you go, and the better you get. This also means that the better you get, the less you can take the game seriously in a tactical, competitive sense, unless you're way better than your opponents (like Dash, for example).

To some extent, this is true for all types of competitions, not just 40k.

My point is that a lot of people that want to compete get hung up on things outside of their control. I don't just mean 40k, I mean everything. There is this attitude of, "Well, I can't control that, so why bother?" They don't like my style as a writer, so why bother? I don't have the best boxing trainer, so why bother? If I get hit by a lucky punch, I lose, so why bother?

You know why I really like 40k? Because in real life, life is unfair. In real competitions, competitions are unfair. Bad luck and good luck represent that. It's true for everything . Your ability to overcome randomness is a better representation of real life competition than a game like chess. People always treat competitions like, "Oh, you just have to get lucky."

This is the Number One excuse I hear when people complain when I win. "You got lucky."

There was a movie (Dirty Pretty Things) where a character (Guo Yi) said, "People who are good at chess are bad at life." That's because in real life, your pieces don't always do what you want.

Ailaros wrote:

scuddman wrote:What is it that you take from the conclusion?

The moral I've gotten from this, actually, is that the more equal in skill level you become to your opponents, the less you can take the game seriously in a tactical, competitive sense.

Given that there is diminishing return to more skill, this means that once you hit a certain level, the costs become enormous while at the same time the game continues to be determined more by luck than by skill, the further you go, and the better you get. This also means that the better you get, the less you can take the game seriously in a tactical, competitive sense, unless you're way better than your opponents (like Dash, for example).

This means, that in order to continue to have tactics as the core of my 40k experience means that either I need to whomp on worse players, or I need to change what is the core of my 40k experience, or I need to give up 40k for a game that doesn't have a random element involved. My particular choice of aesthetic has yet been determined.

Not entirely true. You can always work on improving your game, understanding that, sometimes all the skill in the world won't get you a win. But just because you may lose games to the roll of the dice is no reason to abandon any reason to work on your game.

Furthermore, if your enjoyment of 40k is based solely on your win/loss percentage, I feel sorry for you, and yeah, you probably should go and do something else with your time. I'd rather lose a well-fought game than win by rote, with the same list I'd used time and again before. I'm reminded of this article. It is the experience that matters, not the result, and the experience of playing a good game, even if you lose it, is what 40k should be about.

scuddman wrote:

40k for a game that doesn't have a random element involved.

There are no games without random elements. All competitions have uncontrolled elements. Good luck with that. If your conclusion is how you feel about 40k, then I will point out that you will draw the same conclusions about all competitions. Even if you don't agree with me now, you will agree with me eventually.

You know, except chess, or go, or even checkers. You may say, 'it's random who goes first' - but in the real competitions they play multiple games, and each player goes first an equal number of times. No one ever loses their queen because they rolled ones and their opponent's pawn rolled sixes.

This is the Number One excuse I hear when people complain when I win. "You got lucky."

One of the keys to being a good player is being able to recognize the difference between your opponent getting lucky, and you making a mistake. There are times when, despite playing an optimal strategy and taking as many precautions as possible, your units just get killed. And there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that. But, you should take the opportunity to carefully examine those games and figure out if you could have done things differently to get a better result. Someone who immediately jumps to the conclusion that luck was the cause of their win or loss is someone who is making excuses. But that doesn't mean it wasn't the case

scuddman wrote:You haven't convinced me this is true. It might be a core tenet, but I say this is why it fails to match reality.

This particular part of the theory is based on the idea of a control variable. In brief, the more you can control for a variable, the less impact that variable has on the results compared to uncontrolled variables. I don't think it's that strange to think that, for players playing with the same list, on a symmetrical table, at the exact same skill level, etc. luck will be the only determining factor. Of course, no game has ever had all variables but luck completely controlled for, which is why the theory states that the more those things ARE controlled for, the less those controlled variables are determinant of the outcome of the game.

The more things become controlled, the more uncontrollable things (like luck) matter.

scuddman wrote:This is the Number One excuse I hear when people complain when I win. "You got lucky."

As Redbeard said, what if you ARE lucky? What if that IS the reason you win games?

It's one thing to take responsibility for one's actions, it's another to pretend like things outside of your control don't exist.

After all...

scuddman wrote:You know why I really like 40k? Because in real life, life is unfair. In real competitions, competitions are unfair. Bad luck and good luck represent that.

In any case, this is certainly a different aesthetic than my own. I'll admit that one of the twinges I get from losing or drawing a game I should have won due to luck is that, outside of the world of 40k, I'm not terribly successful, also for reasons beyond my control, for the most part. Were I to quit something simply because the results were determined, more or less (depending on the circumstances), by forces beyond my control, then I'd have no choice but to quit life.

One can most certainly work hard to improve one's odds, in 40k, or in real life, but success or failure is often far from earned. That one can control everything and so the end results of whatever one has worked towards is entirely based upon the skill with which you applied yourself is a tragic mental trap of the human condition.

Not to wax too much more philosophical, but it seems to me that, regarding the blatant unfairness of both 40k and real life, that one has three options: thrash violently against the world (I won't lie, I listen to rock music on occasion), take safer risks (do things which uncontrollable elements play a smaller part - so play chess instead of 40k, for example), or learn not to derive satisfaction from success. I can scarcely think which is less difficult.

Redbeard wrote: I'm reminded of this article. It is the experience that matters, not the result, and the experience of playing a good game, even if you lose it, is what 40k should be about.

A nice article. It reminds me of a similar "phases of the hunter" thing I saw once.

It seems that there is something so terribly predictable about all of this. Like, human brains are wired in such a way where this kind of behavior pattern surfaces regardless to how we apply our genius.

Hmm... I either need a psychologist or a Taoist priest to continue on from here, as my knowledge is lacking. We don't have any Taoists on dakka, do we?

Phanatik wrote:There is no such thing as "luck."
"Luck" is a concept created by pattern-seeking primates to understand variables that appear to be behaving in a consistent way incorrectly, over the short term.

"Good" or "Bad" luck is a subjective description based upon preconceived notions about perceived extremes of best or worst outcomes.

"Luck" infers some outside controlling force that tends to favor (or disfavor) despite individual needs for neutrality.

A real-life scenario: You are driving alone down the highway when you get a flat. You pull to the side of the road to change it. You might perceive this as "bad" luck. Further down the road, a boulder slides down a hillside and pulverizes the exact spot you would have been in if you had continued driving. It would have been considered "bad" luck to be killed thusly. Therefore, subjectively, the flat tire was "good" luck. However, the very next day after the flat, you are driving with your family when you make a mistake that kills your entire family. You can see where this is going...

40k is a game between two seemingly controlling players interacting with a seemingly static enviroment influenced by seemingly randomized factors, over a short term period.
"Good" or "Bad" "luck" rolling dice during this short term is purely subjective.
"Mistake" or "Mistakes" perceived to occur during this period are based upon preconceived notions of what is a correct or incorrect action at a certain point, based upon previous experience(s).

The winner, in this case of a 40k game, is the player that tends to make the correct action for the current enviroment more often than his opponent.
A so-called "high level player" is a person that tends to make more correct actions over a long period.

Way to sound like an expert on the matter. Saying there is no such thing as luck is just silly. If that were true, then how come everyone doesnt roll the same way with in reason? How can some people be awesome rollers, while others are just terrible? I am a notoriously poor roller. My wife is an insanely good roller. Infact Im so poor at it, I pass MOST of my LD saves, and I play Orks. Most people at my group is middle of the road, and we all use the same dice, and roll on the same part of my table. Ive even tried rolling the same way others roll and its the same out come. Im just not such a good roller.

Ailaros
- The moral I've gotten from this, actually, is that the more equal in skill level you become to your opponents, the less you can take the game seriously in a tactical, competitive sense.

Really?

Errrr... ok. I'm out.....

The concept of being lucky or unlucky at dice only really applies with hindsight. Just because Dash has been consistently unlucky so far isn't a predictor of his future dice rolling.

I'm very much in agreement with Redbeard that the fun of gaming is in a close-fought game, win or lose. I'm in the process of starting a PhD in game design, and that aspect -- the intrinsic reward gained from playing a hard-fought game, even if you lose -- is central to my research.

This whole thread is flawed in that the OP presented a premise that he does not want challenged.

I do not know high level play, but for sure, at low level, "wild dices" can make or break a game. There are multiple times where a "bad choice" was made to get that one shot one a Land Raider or another big target/vehicle, which either worked (destroying the target and easing off the remainder of the game), or fluked totally resulting in a lost unit on the subsequent turn by the "unlucky" player.

Luck has more impact at low level play because it is given more "opportunity" (risk high, win high.... or not). The effect of luck reduces, but is still present, as you get better since you do not place as much odds on a weak success percentage...

Does it start creeping back up near highest level of play or when players are equally skilled, not sure.... I do not think so.

gorium wrote:This whole thread is flawed in that the OP presented a premise that he does not want challenged.

Really?

From where I'm sitting the OP presented a premise that is pretty solid and is defending it with both excellent points and the patience of a saint.

My opinion is that the dice can determine the outcome of a game. A player's skill can mitigate this to some degree but never remove it entirely. I've lost games due to what I believe was horrific luck with the dice but I'm also not above admitting that I've won games due to my opponent's horrific luck with the dice.

gorium wrote:This whole thread is flawed in that the OP presented a premise that he does not want challenged.

That's not true, actually. There were a good 10 pages of thoughtful debate that helped me refine the theory a great deal. If I give the impression that I don't want it challenged, it's because I haven't seen anything particularly useful either way to the theory in several pages now. It's mostly been detractors bashing the theory without really adding anything, or correcting people's misunderstandings of what I was trying to say in the OP.

gorium wrote:Does it start creeping back up near highest level of play or when players are equally skilled, not sure.... I do not think so.

Why not?

Why not?

Since a better player will not let luck take as much place in its "gameplan" than a weaker player, the TOTAL luck or lack thereof will have a lot lesser impact (less moments where luck was crucial due to better playing, movement, opportunities).

As such, the scale, your graph, should not keep luck has a "stable" (straight line) factor through out, but it should have a steady slope down (probably linear). IF you give less weight to luck, it can not be as gamebreaker. Still has a place, but not as game changing has too new guys shooting around, and you can not figure out who will win as both are doing "silly" things.

Does this make any sense to you?

You don't want your theory challenged. You've created a theory based on a guess, and are quick to point out that no one can disprove your theory, when you can't prove it either. The only acceptable medium is actual data points regarding your theory, which a handful of Dakka's competitive elite have contributed and you've rejected. You have to PROVE your theory for it to be valid, not have an invalid theory disproven for it not to be true. It doesn't matter that you have data points to suggest otherwise, because you can't PROVE something as subjective as luck. Since you can't prove your theory, and reject any actual data relevant to the subject, the thread is honestly useless.

gorium wrote:Since a better player will not let luck take as much place in its "gameplan" than a weaker player, the TOTAL luck or lack thereof will have a lot lesser impact (less moments where luck was crucial due to better playing, movement, opportunities). Does this make any sense to you?

Yes, it does. Better players mitigate luck better than worse players.

The problem is that you're looking at player skill in a vacuum. While your are trying to mitigate your bad luck, your opponent is trying to exploit it. While you are trying to exploit your good luck, your opponent is trying to mitigate it.

The end result of if a particular piece of luck was mitigated or exploited in one way or another is based on the RELATIVE skill level between the two players.

If you are much better than your opponent, then, yes, bad luck will hardly matter, as you will be able to mitigate it, and your opponent won't be able to exploit it. This is represented by the left side of the graphs on page one. The closer in skill you become, though, the more controlled player skill becomes, meaning that it's effect on the outcome becomes less and less compared to uncontrollable variables, like luck.

Garuss Acine wrote:You don't want your theory challenged.

I DO want my theory challenged.

Garuss Acine wrote:You've created a theory based on a guess, and are quick to point out that no one can disprove your theory, when you can't prove it either.

I have not thrown positivism out yet. If you have a good reason for why I should, I'd like to hear it. In the meantime, I have NEVER pointed out that no one can disprove this theory, much less been quick to do so.

Garuss Acine wrote: The only acceptable medium is actual data points regarding your theory, which a handful of Dakka's competitive elite have contributed and you've rejected.

I've seen one or two data points, yes, but I have no way of judging the accuracy of the interpretation of those data points as judged by the presenter. Without being able to see the actual data itself, what impact should it have?

If it's simply a lack of data that's the problem, I'd point you to some data points here.

Garuss Acine wrote: It doesn't matter that you have data points to suggest otherwise, because you can't PROVE something as subjective as luck.

Luck is objective, actually. It's called statistics.

Garuss Acine wrote:Since you can't prove your theory, and reject any actual data relevant to the subject, the thread is honestly useless.

I'm sorry you feel this way. If you had something meaningful to contribute to the discussion of this theory, I'd like to hear it. Aggressive slander, unfortunately, isn't particularly helpful.

@ OP

Whatever float your boat at this point.

How convenient is a premise that solely your personal interpretation of it makes any sense? ....

gorium wrote:How convenient is a premise that solely your personal interpretation of it makes any sense? ....

Well, so far I've had several people help me refine my theory, including people who disagree with it. They've been very helpful, because they've actually positively contributed to the discussion. There have been other people who have been talking too, but what they've said has been less useful because they either didn't understand key parts of what I was saying, or because they were making arguments based on illogical thinking.

How have YOU contributed meaningfully to the discussion?

KingCracker wrote:There is no such thing as "luck."

Way to sound like an expert on the matter. Saying there is no such thing as luck is just silly. If that were true, then how come everyone doesnt roll the same way with in reason? How can some people be awesome rollers, while others are just terrible? I am a notoriously poor roller. My wife is an insanely good roller. Infact Im so poor at it, I pass MOST of my LD saves, and I play Orks. Most people at my group is middle of the road, and we all use the same dice, and roll on the same part of my table. Ive even tried rolling the same way others roll and its the same out come. Im just not such a good roller.

This is something that often comes up I think. In my opinion people who claim to be bad rollers are either playing with dices that are bad (I always suggest that both players use the same dices) or they just lose a lot and feel it's easier to excuse their losses on bad luck (more likely). If you actually have some ability to roll lower numbers than average with any dices in the long run I'm very impressed
Also it kind of strikes me that these people often don't take into consideration their good rolls. As soon as you see a bad roll you hear the complaint about how bad roller they are and whenever a good or average roll comes it just passes by without being mentioned. Don't take it personal since I don't know you and maybe this doesn't apply to you at all but this behaviour emphasizes the thought of being a "bad roller".

People who claim to be good rollers are either cheating or are simply considered good rollers by people who consider themselves bad rollers (see the argument above). Or they are just nice against their beaten opponent and says "Well, I got a bit lucky - do you want to play again?" - which is also quite friendly

Can you lose a game based on bad luck - sure! If bad luck is temporary unfavorable results outside what is expected this is possible and likely to happen regularly against players with a similar skill.