Levy-less MaxX, and luck/skill/variance discussion

Congratulation ! We found that you’re better than most netrunner players and just won at least 1.21 internets here !

In all seriousness, It’s totally understandable that you got burnt out by Netrunner but do you really need to be that agressive against people who still enjoy the game ?

:confused:

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I feel like I can say the same thing for every card game I’ve ever played. If you’re smart and you think about it forever, figuring out the best thing to do usually isn’t that hard! Well yeah, but in actual gameplay, there are hundreds of decisions, and making the correct choice every time is next to impossible. I’ve seen you fuck up a whole lot. In fact, I’ve seen literally every player I know commit serious errors and lose games as a result.

I’ve also seen two great players disagree entirely on how to play the same game from the same position, in situations where there is no one correct way to do things, but where it certainly makes a big difference.

I think it’s safe to say a lot of people could stand to improve at Netrunner, but to say that playing it well is “really really easy” is kind of ridiculous.

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while I basically agree with all your points, I think it would have been more appropriate to start a new thread, although admittedly you say you’re done here for a time.

also this. i love hearing good players disagree, especially you and @bblum (:

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Name your price and bettign spread an I challenge you to a D-D-D duel

:smile:

Suffice it to say that we’ve played before and I’ve bet on myself before. It’s not like it will prove one way or the other whether the game is hard. I’m not saying you’re not a good player, I’m just saying that everyone makes mistakes because the game isn’t easy.

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Isn’t that kind of his point, though? If different people all have logical and sound reasons to do different stuff at a point in the game, then could you not argue that it’s luck that determines the actual correct line of play?

I still love the game, but I do get where he’s coming from. Although my skill level is nowhere near that of most of you here.

If you go down that line of reasoning, no game ever created is actually a good game. Either there’s only one correct solution, which means the game can be “solved” and is junk, or there’s more than one, in which case it’s all down to luck and and the game is junk!

For Netrunner I’d argue that none of the two applies, as there can be multiple correct lines, and the best one is determined by hidden information, not luck.

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I admit I am playing devil’s advocat a bit here.

I actually do agree with you that hidden information definitely keeps a game interesting and non-solvable. Sirlin has a great article about the topic as well: Solvability — Sirlin.Net — Game Design

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Well, random acces are not really luck based (except in the early game).

What really pushed luck too far is, IMO, the psi- mechanic. losing a game to 3 or 4 wrong guess is soooo frustrating,

One of the things game with randomness get a lot of flak for in general is, well, being random.

However, randomness in these games tends to produces unique situations that you cannot have prepared to know ahead of time. If you play the same decks over and over again, you’re still going to run into on the runner’s first turn having different ice on R&D/HQ, different credit totals for the corp, etc with a different set of tools in your hand. On the runner’s first turn, they’ll generally have multiple correct lines (facecheck, econ up, a mix of the two). This diverges out pretty rapidly. Its hard to make a game that constantly presents you with situations you haven’t seen before that doesn’t have randomness in it.

Sure, you have general principles that you can apply to similar situations, but you’re always being presented with unique situations, often with multiple plausible lines of play. Which is another way netrunner is good. Most card games your options are limited to cards in hand, where as in netrunner you always have the option of drawing for more options, or making non-card plays. Netrunner always gives both players a good deal of meaningful choice.

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Your post is somehow like a Zen koan where it makes sense and is total nonsense at the same time. You should write it like this:

A novice Runner once came to Edmund, and asked “how can I stop sucking hardcore at Netrunner”? Edmund replied without hesitation:

it is really really easy to learn how to be good if you actually think about your lines.

At that moment, the novice was enlightened.

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you made my day!!

The thing about Netrunner (and all games with RNG) is that you have to move away from linking winning with being good. In this game, you can take optimal lines and still lose. A hard thing for me is to not get discouraged when I lose (who am I kidding, I still get discouraged every time). Sometimes you’re just not going to win, even if you play well. There are certainly many suboptimal ANR players, but there are also lots of good players that lose often, especially when they play other good players.

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I’m solidified as a fan now.

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On an individual game level, sure. But you don’t end consistently in top4/8 in every tournament / league you play if you aren’t good.
Being good isn’t linked on individual win but on how consistent you are during a reasonably long period of time.

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I will point to the old adage:

If you want to avoid luck, play chess.

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I completely disagree that random chance in ANR means it is devoid of skill. Deck building and calculating probability to mitigate that randomness is part of the skill, and so is reacting to it. However, just like any other game with random elements, you’re still going to have freak situations where you lose or win out of nowhere just because. Either accept that or move on, but please don’t insinuate we’re all plebs for sticking with it. :wink:

That all said, Psi games are fucking bullshit. I’m with nuTella on that.

I’d rather lose on a psi game where I get to choose my bid than lose on an RND access that I statistically should win on.

Or prismata :smile:

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I think any game need some level of randomness because if every game was finite, it wouldn’t be challenging and fun to play. I’m totally ok on winning / losing some games on random accesses. What you need to understand is that even if it happens, it doesn’t happen that often. Statistically on a large set of games, the random bullshit access only happen in a fraction of games. It’s not because you got a serie of bad experience that every game will end that badly. And even with bad luck, there’s still stuff to do, like drawing cards / clicking for credits, something you just can’t do in any other card games.

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