Dice roll is a better metophor then coin flip when discussing teammates.

Kai Guy·Jun 21, 2019·1 votes·1,129 views

Its a much better way to portray luck of the draw teammates in relation to teammates.

Dice have ranges. Coins are yes or no. Dice can be used to represent individual players on a team and show the impact of a low range teammates or high range opponent. Coins don't.

This would set a lot better expectations for players, but still does a good job to show the frustration mismatched games causes and how sometimes games are unwinnable despite personal impact.

Course its not as absolute or tilted so no doubt this thread dies rapidly, but if I am lucky a few of yall who are rational will see it before its buried in new and might find it to be a helpful.

12 Comments

SaezioJun 21, 20192 votes

If it was a dice roll, you could get a 3 vs a 4 and the game is kinda even.

A coinflip means you win or lose based on your luck, 0 skill is involved.

Also, a dice roll is really vague, because you can roll 2 and win if the enemy rolls a 1.

Coinflip better portrays the feeling of frustrated people that can't do nothing in the game to win/lose it. (affect the outcome in any way)

Coinflip means this= heads you win, tails you lose

Dice means what? If I roll a 4 what does it represent different to a 3?

Kai GuyJun 21, 20191 votes

That's the thing. Not all player are equal ranges so we don't use uniform dice. Each individual is a dice of X sides. winning team has the highest total sum of rolls.

This shows the exact impact each member of a team makes and how a high roll can be crippled by 2-4 Bad ones and also accounts for impact the enemy team makes in a match.

Its ment to show individual impact and when and how its not always enough. Later on its good for showing the value of consistency because you shave off lower values for your personal rolls and it shows that impact your ability to win.

SaezioJun 21, 20192 votes

. winning team has the highest total sum of rolls.

So it's a coinflip. It all comes down to a Bullean true/false, even after all the intricacies you want to include, it all comes down to who has the worse players on that pick on that game.

And yeah sure, if I was challenger I would be a 6-sided die with a value of 25 on each side while smurfing in gold with/against people that have 2s and 3s tops so at that point it still is a coinflip, whichever team gets me wins.

Kai GuyJun 22, 20191 votes

If your just wanting to discuss match outcomes with 0 accounting for what generated the result then coin flip is fine as a metaphor. But if your trying to account for individual impact its weak. Your example of a %100 win rate smurf player for example would not be able to call their games a coin flip. Dice rolls can be used to generate % other then 50% to measure impact.

If I smurfed iron I'm gonna win a lot of games for my team. Coin flip cant represent this accurately.

If the discussion involves personal impact coin flips do a weak job representing that realistic by lacking the ability to represent anything other then yes or no. Is that unfair to claim? I just don't think reducing % to inaccurate values is wise because "there is only two outcomes." For example. You eather win or lose if you buy a lotto ticket but if you think It's 50% odds becuase you simplified to that extreme do your odds to win change? Do we call lotto a Coin flip?

Edit. I'm glad you posted btw.

SaezioJun 22, 20192 votes

I get what you mean. But people are using the coinflip analogy when frustrated. So I don't see a reason to put any further thought into creating another analogy with dice. You play better, you have less chance to lose. I find it pretty simple and I think your whole dice parallel is not needed if someone is willing to accept they actually do impact their games

Kai GuyJun 22, 20191 votes

Thats simple. Becuase I want to help the frusturated players. If I can convince more folks for dice > coin. It lays the groundwork to get players to focus on consistency in addition to the standard "git gud" attitude. Because you can see the clear impact it makes. And this works even if some one is overvalueing their personal skill.

HeresyHorusJun 22, 20191 votes

Ah the nostalgia, good ol days of rolling dices in D&D and tabletop W40K...

Back to the point of thread; yes dice > coin and it is implemented, thing is there are lot more things that accounts for winning even harder then skill matchups (like braindead hard counter champs) for it to matter.

Kai GuyJun 22, 20191 votes

Right. In line with this analogy that can be represented by putting a negative modifier to any ones best case rolls if you wanted to show a player how matchups impact game results. Something DnD players are familiar with.

If a champ you play has a very high # of hard counters that all enjoy popularity and are common picks it might be better to play something a bit safer in the situations your an earlier pick. It also might encourage players to use bans not just for what ever they hate, but to prevent a teammate from having to face a counter that's gonna demolish them.

Also. The red ones go faster!

preternaturalJun 22, 20191 votes

but most win rates are sub 50

Kai GuyJun 22, 20191 votes

You talking player win % or Champion win %?

Overall I feel Win % is a weak stat with low data size. 100% win rate out of 1 game is not really impressive. Grading a high skill cap champion by their majority win rate when its something like 98% of the stats are tracked from players under 51 games does not always represent how well a champion can be played.

As crazy as it sounds to some of the more angry players on the boards end of the day skill matters in games of skill even with some RNG elements like teammate. Hell when you do the math the odds of the worst player being on your team are provably lower with one notable exception. If your the weakest link.

So I want to try to convince more folks who use the boards frequently to adopt the analogy of 10 Dice rolls over 1 coin flip. This sets a lot of groundwork for how you can prove to frustrated players there are opportunities to adjust their own impac, highlight some common logical errors people make, and the entire time you can still account for how much it fucking sucks to get trash teammates and the high impact they make on your ability to win so a frustrated poster can still get some validation.

It can help players understand how to improve far better then "Git Gud" or its "all luck." There are two easy ways to focus on improving, Narrow your Range, even if your top end skill does not change, you see a impact on your ability to win over a string of games. This is not mentioned as often as the standard improve your best case "carry harder!"