Board Game Arena

I feel the mechanics are very lop sideded random is not what i would choose if i was in Vegas I like this platform odds but in board games lets correct the dice roll. I feel you defiinltly choose a side, i like the concept but not the favoritism game. fix your *

*Moderator edit: please refrain from swearing on BGA, this is a family-friendly platform.

hagdarviking wrote: ↑02 February 2026, 03:10 I feel the mechanics are very lop sideded random is not what i would choose if i was in Vegas I like this platform odds but in board games lets correct the dice roll. I feel you defiinltly choose a side, i like the concept but not the favoritism game. fix your *

I agree, people who fart too much get all the good dice. I don't want to pass that much gas just to improve my rolls, it's unfair!

I don’t understand. It’s random enough for Vegas but for board games you want to somehow … “correct the dice roll”? What would that look like?

Do you have any idea how complicated it would be in most games to figure out what roll would be most beneficial for a given player? “This guy is trying to build a city but needs more brick, and that means we need to roll a 5.” How would the game know which resource would be helpful?

Have you considered instead that maybe you’re just not very good at Catan? (I say this as someone who isn’t very good at it either.) Good players try to set things up so that most rolls are “helpful” in some way. It then looks like the dice favor them, but they’re just better at setting things up. Instead of assuming the dice are against you, maybe take a closer look and see how the winner set themselves up. (Hint: you need to produce settlements and roads. Brick is essential for both, but you never produced any brick, and probably not enough stone to make claiming the stone port with one of your initial settlements worthwhile.)

Luck has a competence bias.

I've stopped believing in randomness. When you lose the final of one of the most prestigious tournaments of a game, facing one of the greatest players of that game, after you had about a 99% chance of winning when you played your last turn, it dawns on you that there isn't really such a thing as randomness. There is only fate.

The way I approach things now is... if I win, great, it means I was the chosen one. And if I lose, then it means it just wasn't meant to be, and it's someone else who was the chosen one.

It's good practice to learn to decenter yourself. There is room for more than one champion in a game. It's not all about you, and it's important to recognize the value of other great players, and take the time to appreciate their skills, their games and their achievements.

Any time luck is involved in a game you're going to win some and you're going to lose some. Just accept your fate and play to the best of your ability to maximize the effect of good role and minimize the damage done by bad rolls.

Did I miss some information here?

What game is being discussed?

BGA should really make a pedagogical sticky post about randomness perception bias, all these threads lead to nowhere

Shobu wrote: ↑02 February 2026, 14:33 BGA should really make a pedagogical sticky post about randomness perception bias, all these threads lead to nowhere

Well, they lead to a great list of players you can decide not to play against before you have to deal with them freaking out, when you win

On a site where millions of games are played, unlikely things will happen.

At the risk of stating the obvious:

If a player is an 80% favorite, that means the opponent will win 20% of the time.
I use those umbers because it happens a lot in poker: An all-in pre flop and one person has a higher pocket pair, let's say QQ vs. JJ.
Well, the jacks will beat the queens 20% of the time. This happens a couple times and someone goes on about how the site is rigged. I mean, it's a 1/5 probability.

Being a 99.9% favorite means losing 1 time out of 1000. Yeah, I've had that happen too, in a live poker game with no computers to blame for the "bad randomness" or whatever. It happens.

I had a Wingspan game where I lost a lot of points because the bird feeder did not roll a worm. What are the odds of that !? Fortunately, it did not cost me the game, but it could have.

Etc.