Simple Maths: The Reason behind Artifact’s fall? RNG

Or rather, the lack of it.

Browsing through sentiments between AutoChess and Artifact made me realize quite bluntly that people love randomness (RNG), and there is very simple maths to support it.

AutoChess, and it’s variants, have layers of gameplay accessible only through RNG, like items and combining heroes. Of course, I would not deny that the core actions, controlling the economy and composition, are undeniably skill-based, but as anyone knows playing AutoChess, getting the right items and heroes can really make or break your game.

However, what AutoChess does is introduce a large amount of RNG as early on as possible, so that most people still have a chance of playing until the later rounds which are increasingly skilled based.

Artifact, on the other hand, does not do this. It just throws you right into the game without any easing of skill-to-RNG ratio, especially since there is no limit to hand size or deck limit. Skilled players would love this, but casual players will be confused.

The maths behind it is rather simple. Say there are two players playing chess. A has 0% skill of the game, and the other, B, has relatively 100% skill of chess. Everytime they play normal chess, B will always win against A 100% of the time. Now this would not be very fun for A but imagine a new chess game where the loser have to roll another 6-faced dice after they play. If the dice hits 1, the loser wins no matter what. Voila! I’ve magically increased the win rate of A to 16.67% even though A has not improved at all. A is now happy because he has a chance to win now, while B is less happy, B knows he has better skill so he will win most of the time.

Sounds familiar? That’s exactly what happens in AutoChess vs Artifact, except the dice is now hidden and embedded into the game. Most collectible card games mitigate this (AutoChess uses this as well) through extensive card draw mechanisms, a focused, limited card pool and mulligan to have high RNG at the start of the game, but lower RNG as the game goes on. Games such as Shadowverse tries to push the skill cap (i.e. the turning point from RNG to skill) to the seventh round to the tenth round, allowing people to at least feel some fun playing their cards.

Artifact, unfortunately, tries to appeal to the crowd of people who feel skill is much more important than RNG. Data about skill levels in games often show how players are usually less skilled than they think they do, and majority of players lack skills to play a game.

The main takeaway here is that, counter-intuitively, if you want your game to be decently successful, you should design your game to have a high baseline amount of RNG which progressively gets reduced as the game session is on-going. It is the equivalent of handing a unwired controller to the user without them knowing directly.