EVE Online has a really interesting approach to this balance as well.

In general, things are heavily weighted towards actual player skill and also character skills accrued over time for the important interactive elements.

For things like loot drops, it's strictly random from a chart per enemy type, but they monitor the overall economy and use that to set the weights for the various items. If one group of people has figured out some trick to farming an extremely valuable item, they will nerf it to keep the economy where they want it. For a number of years, the company actually kept a professional economist on full-time to keep track of these things. I think that got eliminated when CCP was having a rough financial time several years ago. And I think that game has gotten a bit worse as a result.

But in terms of stuff that counts RNGs are a fairly small part of the action, and in some cases not at all, so you can pick your poison: lower overall damage to a target but more consistent, allowing for one kind of play style. Or you can have more variable damage with higher potential if you're willing to take risks. And there are a couple of flavors along the spectrum.

It's a pretty interesting game design. And, of course, tons of people complain about it. Loot drops really are pretty damn random (with between 30-40 thousand people online at any given time, there's a lot of entropy to seed the PRNG). And you get the clusters you would expect from random data. But everyone really hates random outcomes. People want uniform outcomes. It's baked into our psychology.

But in terms of things that determine who lives and who dies in a fight. The random element is really downplayed, and it boils down to player skill more than anything.

There's a whole thing where people who have been playing for a long time will start brand new accounts with low skill levels and shitty equipment and still be able to blow people out of the water because they have a superior understanding of the game mechanics. In fact, there are entire "corporations" who really do nothing but this. Fine people who have been around for long enough to make some money and buy some expensive things and then lure them into fights and slaughter their bling-bling.

It's an interesting approach to game balance, and one I quite admire. It does keep me coming back, and paying that sweet, sweet monthly sub.

EVE is also one of the games that really capitalizes on the technology component. As much as I love Skyrim, for example, I don't think there's anything going on with the actual game interaction mechanics that couldn't be easily replicated on a table with some dice. I'm also willing to eat my words if I'm completely wrong about that.

EVE Online has the luxury of hammering out fairly complicated formulas based on the current state of things, and it does so very well. It does it for every ship in space (again, typically 30-40k), once each server tick (usually a tick is 1 second, but for really huge fights, they dilate time and slow the ticks down).

So they can make things like damage calculated for each gun or missile or drone on each ship based on every relevant ship's current speed and direction relative to every other ship, etc.

It's an impressive use of technology for an RPG, and I find it especially cool that you are your own gamemaster. The only story is the one you make for yourself.

But now I sound like a fucking fanboi, so I'll shut up.

I've never heard of Amber Diceless before. I'm curious and will check it out. Thanks for mentioning.