D&D 5E What is your "Sweet Spot" of Success? (poll)

[DND_Reborn]

The psychology of this has been studied for games. ~65% success rate is the sweet spot for enjoyment. Not a nigh "sure thing" that sometime fails leaving a bad taste, but also not consistent and regular failures.

I'm not surprised to see two clusters for, more or less, a bimodal distribution. I haven't done the analysis yet to see if this is actually bimodal or not, however.

Anyway, we have one group who averages the 35ish% (myself included) and the second group averaging 65ish%.

I find 65% much too high. It makes things that should be a challenging routine--which makes it predictable and boring IMO. It is one of the reasons I dislike combat in 5E. Even at lower levels you hit 60+% of the time--it ceases to be special at all and people don't actually get "excited" when they hit.

I imagine those voting in the upper group probably feel the opposite.

 

[Blue]

I'm not surprised to see two clusters for, more or less, a bimodal distribution. I haven't done the analysis yet to see if this is actually bimodal or not, however.

Anyway, we have one group who averages the 35ish% (myself included) and the second group averaging 65ish%.

I find 65% much too high. It makes things that should be a challenging routine--which makes it predictable and boring IMO. It is one of the reasons I dislike combat in 5E. Even at lower levels you hit 60+% of the time--it ceases to be special at all and people don't actually get "excited" when they hit.

I imagine those voting in the upper group probably feel the opposite.

This is an opinion, we are both right. Saying that upfront because it's what works for individuals, and there no single right answer. So I don't want this to come across as a negation of what you are saying, just an explanation for what I feel about it.

For me, in a game like D&D, the down of failure is worse than not getting a big "up" when it succeeds.

I mention "in a game like D&D" for multiple reasons. First is that the consequences of failure in D&D are usually less fun for the player then consequences of winning. Other games with less permanent stakes where failure is on par or can even be more interesting than success.

Second is because D&D usually has two modes. A "non-combat" mode, where checks are rare and have a big result, so a failure could derail a whole scene, and "combat" mode, where there can be 5-10-15 minutes between actions so a failed roll is a big deal.

In both cases, the down of failure is a big one, and if it happens twice as frequently as a positive result, it would still be a net negative for me even though there is a boost from a rare success.

 

[Minigiant]

You have a point.

New NPC Adventurer party

SNL Samurai - Fighter
MacGruber- Rogue
The Church Lady - Cleric
Unfozen Caveman Lawyer - Wizard
David S Pumpkins- Warlock

 

[Seramus]

Game Theory in many schools teach 70-75% as the "Sweet Spot" for the highest number of people reporting themselves as satisfied with their experience. That's a broader study of video games and gambling, as opposed to Table Top RPGs though.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm not surprised to see two clusters for, more or less, a bimodal distribution. I haven't done the analysis yet to see if this is actually bimodal or not, however.

Anyway, we have one group who averages the 35ish% (myself included) and the second group averaging 65ish%.

I find 65% much too high. It makes things that should be a challenging routine--which makes it predictable and boring IMO. It is one of the reasons I dislike combat in 5E. Even at lower levels you hit 60+% of the time--it ceases to be special at all and people don't actually get "excited" when they hit.

I imagine those voting in the upper group probably feel the opposite.

This is an opinion, we are both right. Saying that upfront because it's what works for individuals, and there no single right answer. So I don't want this to come across as a negation of what you are saying, just an explanation for what I feel about it.

For me, in a game like D&D, the down of failure is worse than not getting a big "up" when it succeeds.

I mention "in a game like D&D" for multiple reasons. First is that the consequences of failure in D&D are usually less fun for the player then consequences of winning. Other games with less permanent stakes where failure is on par or can even be more interesting than success.

Second is because D&D usually has two modes. A "non-combat" mode, where checks are rare and have a big result, so a failure could derail a whole scene, and "combat" mode, where there can be 5-10-15 minutes between actions so a failed roll is a big deal.

In both cases, the down of failure is a big one, and if it happens twice as frequently as a positive result, it would still be a net negative for me even though there is a boost from a rare success.

I think the 2 clusters are mostly do to different perceptions of person doing the action.

I believe

• The 35% group is seeing a common person doing a difficult procedure
• The 65% group is seeing a trained professional (but not master) doing the procedure

 

[clearstream]

I'm not surprised to see two clusters for, more or less, a bimodal distribution. I haven't done the analysis yet to see if this is actually bimodal or not, however.

Anyway, we have one group who averages the 35ish% (myself included) and the second group averaging 65ish%.

I find 65% much too high. It makes things that should be a challenging routine--which makes it predictable and boring IMO. It is one of the reasons I dislike combat in 5E. Even at lower levels you hit 60+% of the time--it ceases to be special at all and people don't actually get "excited" when they hit.

I imagine those voting in the upper group probably feel the opposite.

I would still argue for - it's only really difficult if the consequences are ones that would be difficult to deal with.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I think the 2 clusters are mostly do to different perceptions of person doing the action.

I believe

• The 35% group is seeing a common person doing a difficult procedure
• The 65% group is seeing a trained professional (but not master) doing the procedure

No, the 35% group sees a trained profession doing a DIFFICULT procedure. Difficult is not routine at all, for a common person it would be closer to 10% IMO.

We are seeing the same perception, but simply disagree on what the chances of success should be.

(Which is fine, of course.)

 

[DND_Reborn]

I would still argue for - it's only really difficult if the consequences are ones that would be difficult to deal with.

I disagree. It is difficult if the task is difficult to complete. The consequences might be completely insignificant.

For example, doing a difficult cross-word puzzle can be challenging (even for someone who is "good" at them), but the consequence of not completing it is really nothing other than frustration--it isn't like their lives depend on it.

 

[Composer99]

In point of fact, outside of professional team sports, it's usually considered disastrous if a trained person or team doing a difficult thing had a mere 25-40% success rate outside of the most extraordinary of circumstances.

(For instance, this admittedly rather old article suggests that hospitals of the day were falling short if their survival rate for replacing the heart's aortic valve - surely a challenging procedure at the best of times - was less than 95%!)

If as a player you enjoy pro-team-sport-levels of success (where, for instance, converting 15-20% of your shots on goal into a goal in ice hockey is an amazing achievement), that's fine as far as it goes, but frankly it comes across as enjoying feeling lucky more than feeling challenged.

---

To my mind, being challenged in RPG gameplay is first and foremost about testing your skills as a player, whether that's your system mastery, your care and attention to the description of the world around your PC and such deductions that you can make about that world as a result, your clever use of equipment and personal resources to bypass or resolve obstacles, your leveraging of social relationships in the fiction, and other skills besides. (Note that I stated being challenged, as opposed to feeling challenged, which of course is a matter of player psychology.)

Insisting on challenge-as-low-success-rate strikes me as saying that being challenged is more like playing a game of, "You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well do ya, punk?” Go nuts if you want, but I just don't see the point.

 

[Reynard]

So if you advocate a 75% chance of failure for a "hard" task, you are saying 3 of 4 locked doors should remain inaccessible to the players, and 3 of 4 NPCs should not move for the players. I hope you have plans for what happens after those failures.