How much time do you spend thinking about random chance? If you play video games, probably a fair amount. The designers working on Crowfall certainly have, and they’ve also taken the time to talk about it with a new article. But said article also takes the time to discuss things like the Gambler’s Fallacy and other perceptions of random number generation, discussions that many players and some designers seem to forget on the regular when looking at these systems.
(If you’re unfamiliar with the fallacy, ask yourself the following question: If you flip a coin nine times and it comes up heads each time, what are the odds that it will be heads on another flip? The answer is 50%, but the fallacy makes us think it’s lower.)
The team is looking into ways to adjust its RNG systems so that players don’t feel that they are stuck with bad outcomes or subjected to excessive streaks of bad luck; one of the systems proposed (and noted as a likely choice) is the “deck” system, where every possible outcome is in a certain deck that you shuffle through, thus meaning that bad luck streaks have inherently higher chances to end as you get more failures. This also ties into the game’s crafting system that both discourages light dabbling and keeps players from feeling like failures produce nothing useful after lengthy gathering. Check out the full article for the details.
