Games or game sections that require more luck than skill.

[Cogwheel]

The final boss of Terranigma. It swooping close enough to get hit, much like a far earlier boss fight in the game, is a matter of luck. It could just pepper you with ranged attacks. Still, if your level is adequate, it's not that hard.

Also, roguelikes. An entire vicious subgenre of RPGs where everything depends on the RNG, more or less. And if you die, your save file is erased.

Someone please remind me why I enjoy playing them?

 

[Jandau]

I'm fascinated by the number of people listing Dragon Age, since luck is almost a non-factor in that game...

 

[thedeathscythe]

Wii Party, actually. For about 25% of the games, I felt it was pure random. There is a game where it's 4 players and there's 4 fireworks, you all choose a separate firework and the one that goes highest wins. That's all, you don't do anything to increase your odds of winning, it's a god damned blind guess, and I think that all those minigames don't deserve to be in the game.

There's also this sort of main game, I would call it, that's like bingo. By "main game", I mean, you know in Mario Party, you're sort of playing a board game? Well, in this, you're trying to fill a bingo card. So we played it, and my buddy won because he got bingo....we didn't even do any mini games. We try a second time and we get this "M" ball, and it makes us play a mini game. When you win, you choose any tile/bingo spot you want, and having had a ton of luck and many non-M ball's, someone else won. Are you kidding me? Bingo? That's the best Nintendo could come up with?

Having come from a company that made the Mario Party series (in my opinion, 1-3 are amazing games), Wii Party is an insult on the Nintendo name. Even the board game type main game is pathetic, it's just a straight line and if you reach the end, you just roll a 6 and win. Mario Party was both luck and skill, you strategized your moves and who to screw over. I remember there being some land slide games, but I also remember very close games that weren't just dependent on luck.

Sorry, I don't have a Wii (for a reason), and a couple days ago my friend had a party, he's a very casual gamer and bought that game...I insulted it the whole night and I think I even made him regret buying it, HAH, but I still stand by my opinions of it, it's too luck based and it's just not fun at all.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Anything that includes random drops or randomly generated stuff, obviously. So pretty much all MMOs, most RPGs, Minecraft, TF2, etc.

^This. Seriously some of the droprate for the rare stuff is ridiculous e.g. the droprate of this very rare sword from Phantasy Star Zero is like 0.001%

 

[Jandau]

I'm fascinated by the number of people listing Dragon Age, since luck is almost a non-factor in that game...

I'm guessing those people played the console version in which it was hard to give tactical orders to your team, and normal difficulty had no friendly fire. On the PC, there was ZERO luck involved. You either positioned your team right and gave them the right orders at the right time, or you didn't. Played very much like a turn-based strategy game in a sense.

True, I suppose the tactical view did give the PC version an advantage, but still, with a good tactics setup and some character switching I don't see why luck would matter so much. Also, as you said, console difficulty was lower, so I'd call it even.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I am surprised no one mentioned any Call of Duty titles yet.

Indeed. Getting a good game in COD is often about getting very lucky with spawns and connection, and if you often play alone like I do, you need to get extra lucky with team-mates.

I do so love those games of TDM where you go 26-5 and still lose.

 

[Archereus]

Well i would say World of Warcraft has a fair amount of luck involved, chances of having herbs or mining points come up, gear drops, stronger item chances....a whole lot of luck in that game...damn dice rolls

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

I'm fascinated by the number of people listing Dragon Age, since luck is almost a non-factor in that game...

I'm guessing those people played the console version in which it was hard to give tactical orders to your team, and normal difficulty had no friendly fire. On the PC, there was ZERO luck involved. You either positioned your team right and gave them the right orders at the right time, or you didn't. Played very much like a turn-based strategy game in a sense.

I played it on the console, and there is still no luck involved.

 

[RatRace123]

Mario Kart, especially the Wii iteration. Never have I been hit by 5 Blue Shells in a row, A ROW no less! Why doesn't the game just rip the god damn controller from my hands if it doesn't want me to win!?

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Any online FPS multiplayer. Sometimes when faced with a t-junction you'll be lucky, look the right way first and come face to face with someone who's reloading, and sometimes you'll be unlucky, look the wrong way first and get a shotgun to the back of the head.

Also, roguelikes. An entire vicious subgenre of RPGs where everything depends on the RNG, more or less. And if you die, your save file is erased.

Someone please remind me why I enjoy playing them?

This is also another good shout. I've lost count of the number of characters that have died in sudden, meaningless, and downright random deaths whilst playing games like ADOM. I can't speak for Cogwheel, but I suppose I enjoy Roguelikes because the RNG (the very thing that makes playing these games such a trial) is the very thing that ensures each game is different, varied and new every time you play.

 

[Tupolev]

I am surprised no one mentioned any Call of Duty titles yet.

Or Halo. Or any console-centered shooter really.

Halo's 2 and onward, I can understand the argument for. Halo 2's campaign on legendary in particular is a luck fest, though I suppose it's such a horrible luck fest that it's more like a memorization fest, and even then the game tries to screw you at every possible opportunity. There's a reason that Cody Miller's single-segment no-deaths Halo 2 run [http://highspeedhalo.net/?p=2454] is so highly respected.

Halo CE defies the froodlenutzskying out of the commonly-held belief that console shooters have low and ill-defined skill gaps, though; its skill gap is enormous and rather consistant.

I was talking pretty much exclusively about the multiplayer in those games. Aim assist really puts a fine line between luck and skill.

Oh, I know the focus was on multiplayer. When I say that Halo CE's multiplayer has a vast and consistant skill gap, it comes from experience consistantly getting my butt kicked by people who clearly had more skill than me and consistantly kicking the butts of people who I was clearly better than.

While HCE's aim magnetism is noticeable because it has only very rudimentary application logic (it doesn't turn off in cases where you aren't intentionally tracking an enemy), it's actually substantially less extreme than in many newer games; in Reach, if your reticle accidentally locks, it can wind up being helplessly dragged spot-on on the opponent for the better part of a second even if you try to drag it off. And the hitboxes are actually properly sized, while, say, Reach's head hitboxes literally have twice the diameter of a head.

If you want to argue that modern Halo games have fairly small skill gaps, I'm inclined to agree. As much as I usually try to survive in Reach on superior tactics (and succeed), I've definitely noticed that, while better DMR users have a tendency to win fights, I do nonetheless frequently pull through against them, particularly a fight degenerates into CQB pistol spam (I swear, the magnum cannot miss at close range if you just spin about and fire wildly. Sometimes I think its reticle bloom makes the bullet larger rather than accuracy worse.).

 

[migo]

A whole lot of Mario Party has to do with luck and luck only.

Nah, you can definitely strategise in there. People say that Risk is about luck too, but they just don't have good strategy.

 

[migo]

Minesweeper on the hardest difficulty.

You will have to make pure guesses between two or more blocks every so often.

At which point you click in an empty space because if you're guessing between 2 it's a 50% chance of a bomb while a random click has a significantly lower chance.

 

[C117]

Magic: the Gathering.

Sure, it requires a great deal of strategic thinking, but whether you'll end up with good cards or just a pack of stuff that you can't use, is left up to fate.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

Magic: the Gathering.

Sure, it requires a great deal of strategic thinking, but whether you'll end up with good cards or just a pack of stuff that you can't use, is left up to fate.

I gonna have to disagree with you on this. Yea, drawing from a deck includes random chance but that is why you have to plan what cards go into the deck. The best decks in magic are ones where the creators tailor the odds of what they draw in their favor kinda like how professional poker players memorize the odds so they know whether they should fold or stay. That strikes me as requiring more thought and strategy than just luck.

I would have to say most free for all matches online in any FPS. Those become who gets the luckiest spawn point near the best weapon. At least in team matches you can count on buddies to cover you while you reload.

 

[warm slurm]

Professor K from the Lost Odyssey DLC. 100% luck-based if you fight him normally, and probably still about 50% luck if you use the "cheap" way. Not to mention you pretty much need everyone to be about level 90 for the cheap tactic to work.

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The worst part is that if you die, you have to go through a dungeon that's about 20 floors and is as interesting as the prison in Final Fantasy VIII again -- there's no save point.

 

[Krantos]

Anytime in a shooter where the enemy have one-hit kill weapons. Essentially, the chance of an enemy hitting you is random. You can take cover all day, but you have to put yourself in the line of fire sometime if you want to continue. Thus, giving the enemy the ability to kill you in one hit turns the game into a random dice roll every time you poke your fat head around the wall.

Also, at the Risk comment: Dice hate me. I was winning a game of Risk once, I had all of Africa and South America and was slowly slowly taking over North America. Then I attacked a country defended by five armies, with 30 armies. I lost everything, they lost one. Then on their turn they traded in their cards, kicked me off South America only losing a couple troops (I had 2-5 armies on each country btw) and took the first country in Africa. Half a dozen turns later I was eliminated. So yes, there is a significant amount of luck involved with Risk.

 

[Lord_Nemesis]

That bit in one of them Fear Effect games, cant rmemeber which. The bit at the end where you have to step through 1 square of 2, the 1 square of 3 and so on untill 1 square of 8 or something. No clues or hints to which square. Pure Luck. You step on thr wrong square 2 or 3 times, you die, reload and start again, every time the order is mixed so you cant even memorize.

Balls.