AFAIK it’s a consensus inside esports that randomness must be decreased? League of Legends has little RNG, Dota has extra however each video games make use of rng smoothing algorithms (particulars for Dota, LoL).

The rationale is that if there’s randomness then random probability can simply decide the end result of a match (as an alternative of participant ability) which is unacceptable for professional play and tournaments. Quoting the articles I linked to above:

Generally Randomness is rejected from aggressive gaming since it may well determine over loss and defeat with out reflecting the precise ability degree.

In League, a single motion can decide the end result of a lane, and even the sport. For that reason, randomness within the recreation is a difficult subject. Whereas touchdown an enormous crucial strike (crit) in your opponent will be satisfying, being the sufferer of a “fortunate” crit will be irritating, or worse: a random occasion may trigger a talented participant to lose to a less-skilled participant, despite the fact that the expert participant made a greater play. In an informal recreation, the choice to incorporate randomness could be a no brainer, if it makes the sport extra enjoyable. Nevertheless, the choice to incorporate randomness in Esports has the potential to make or break a professional participant’s profession or decide the end result of a event. Because of this, many recreation builders take measures to scale back the affect of randomness of their video games.

Appears affordable, however… I dont perceive, there simply appear to be too many counterexamples! Pokemon is insanely random, but Pokemon is being performed competitively so far as Im conscious. Extra historically, Poker and Bridge appear to be ones of the obvious counterexamples. These video games would appear to reveal that it isn’t the case that professional play calls for little to no randomness?

If and why does it make sense to scale back randomness in video games supposed to be performed competitively?

For the sake of completeness, I really feel I would like to incorporate two extra opinions on the topic I heard/learn.

Firstly: On Discord, somebody informed me that Poker shouldn’t be actually similar to LoL as it’s much less well-liked (I used to be astonished to study that LoL tournaments have tens of million watchers whereas Poker solely has a whole lot of 1000’s) and Poker is a playing recreation, which is why randomness works for Poker – randomness in video games makes them playing video games which presents an issue by itself.

Secondly: Additional Credit made a video on the topic, the place they mentioned randomness can work for competitve video games (and IIUC implied that the declare that aggressive video games should have little to no randomness is wrong) however event format must be adjusted – as an alternative of single elimination they need to make the tournaments in spherical robin. However does not this introduce new issues, since – right me if I am mistaken – do not most individuals, each gamers and spectators, discover spherical robin excessively boring?