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Skill checks
(media.piefed.world)
(in D&D at least)
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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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I don't mean that it's ultra rare, just that it serves the same function as a jackpot - it's the best possible outcome, the thing you're always hoping will happen when you scratch the ticket, press the button or roll the dice.
It's your chance to have that YOU WIN BIG moment. Setting up that mechanic and then creating situations where it doesn't apply is intentionally designing disappointment.
I disagree that 1% chance is a jackpot but 5% isn't. I'm using jackpot as an analogy for the emotional impact of a rarer, higher tier win mechanic - I don't think specifying a number is useful here. That feeling can happen with a range of different rarities.
I'm not following your point about nat 1s, free gimmes or supply and demand.
I think we're using very different ideas of game design. Are you using good design in the sense of like "tactically balanced"? I think of good game design as setting up and meeting player expectations for fun while minimizing frustration.
The game sets up rolling 20 and critting as a win big moment. To occasionally then deny players that fails to meet expectations and creates disappointment. That's why I think it's bad design. And why most people don't play it as written.
Elden ring absolutely does meet player expectations - challenge is the expectation of the souls-like genre.
I don't disagree with any of this but I'm not talking about how the win should look in the fiction.
It's just that when you roll a crit but don't get a crit, most players will get extra disappointed. That's a fact of the human experience that no rules text will ever change.
Good design accounts for the reality of how people actually use a thing.
FWIW, inconsistency is one of the things I hate the most about the game design in Elden Ring. It does not properly communicate the actual impact of stat upgrades at different levels (e.g. 39-40 vigor is a significantly higher jump than 40-41 vigor) and enemies will have resistances or weaknesses to different damage types that often feel arbitrary/poorly communicated (e.g. the Magma Wyrm, a creature that breathes fire, is more resistant to fire than the Fire Giant; Borealis, an icy dragon that breathes ice, is nearly as resistant to fire as the Fire Giant; Hero of Zamor, an icy man that shoots ice, is weak to fire).
Elden Ring's design is essentially a form of trial and error that often punishes you for choosing poorly, relying instead on metagame knowledge (patterns from previous Souls games, online discourse) to patch up its shortcomings. Fun as all hell when you know what to do, but its systems are incredibly arcane for newcomers.
Woah wait now. Sure people misuse things but designing with that in mind always produces a better thing than ignoring reality. A gun with a safety is a objectively a better design than a gun with no safety, even if the both have a manual that says not to play with the trigger and keep away from kids.
The game trains you to expect a dopamine reward when you roll a 20. A game that consistently meets the expectations it creates would be a better game.
If you make like five skill checks per game, yes it is rare and it's way more fun to treat it like a crit success. It's not a job, it's a weekend activity that is supposed to bring joy.
I'm not speaking to how the designers intended, but at the end of the day if a 20 is a crit success on skill checks it is a jackpot mechanic. You could go months without getting one in game and when it happens it's absolutely like hitting the jackpot
I think we're talking past each other here-- everyone is saying it SHOULD be a rule and everyone they know does it anyway so it's "part of DND".
It's like stacking +4 cards in uno. Might not be in the rules, but everyone knows to do it.