Well I don't believe in luck as a mystical force that mean some people will always roll bad and some will always roll high. But because of the natural unpredictability of dice roll, on a sample of individual you will probably see that some people tend to roll better than average and some tend to roll below. It's just a fact. Then perception come into play. Two people having the same statistical luck. One will think she is unlucky while the other lay perceive herself as reasonably lucky. And last is the question not the importance of luck ni winning in this game. Personally, I like to play safe and not roll any dice if I can avoid it. For exemple, when playing supremacy I prefer to move my troops rather than going face to face with the opponent, except if I have two wound and a doc nearby. But some army like pano fit this style better than some other like Ariadna which tend to rely ore heavily on luck because not being able to stack as many modifiers (no TO sniper for example)
Perhaps Luck isn't something mystical - but rather a character trait. Like being Tall or short, having deep voice or going bald. maybe you inherited your luck from your parents, maybe it skips a generation!
I don't have luck. I have to get by entirely on skill. But sadly, the old adage, "better lucky than good" sometimes gets me stomped against things that should be no challenge. RIP, Achilles, literally crit to death in my last game.
Dump Stat. Kinda like The Gamer... I raise you: Asura Spitfire on cover against Morat Vanguard unlinked. He rolled, in ARO, three crits. Consecutive. Against the same number. With three different dice.
So, you suggesting luck is an inherent property of people, like hair color, tendency to need glasses and other things like that? That the universe and probabilities themselves get altered around a certain person, in one direction or another? What you're describing is basically what you'll see this weekend when you get to know Domino on Deadpool, which is a fictitious character from a universe where people can have superpowers. Yes, that is exactly what you're saying. This is easily testable: Take a sample of people, some considered lucky, some considered unlucky, some that are neither. In a double-blind setting (neither the subjects nor the test administrators know which is which, everything is registered but no one knows until everything is tallied), make the subjects do tests where they'll win some sort of reward for coin tossing, dice rolling or other activities that require randomness and would be affected by luck. Do enough tests so that the effects of random anomalies are normalized Tally the results. If there is such thing as luck, we will see a statistically significant difference in some subjects. And yes, this kind of experiment has been repeated daily for centuries all around the world, we call them casinos, where they have a very strong vested interest on detecting people who can alter probabilities in one direction or the other. Yet the only people they refuse to attend are known cheaters, who do so using more mundane methods than the Luck Stat in their Character Sheet. It's one thing to humorously joke about luck and RNGesus and bad dice acting out and "rolling out the ones from them before the game", and another to actually believe that the universe treats some people more or less special than the rest just because. Also, It's OK to have an open mind, it's another to automatically believe in everything presented to you.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1953298164887479 Sorry it's a facebook link, couldn't find anything on YT
All I'm saying is that you have a very world view. Casino's odds are stacked heavily in their favor - what your taking away from my argument is that some people totally and utterly win every game they play on luck. This isn't the case, it is most often a combination of both luck and skill. Much like the casino analogy, you have to have a little bit of both to walk away from the table with a net positive. As for your double blind test, it would ultimately prove moot because as we know with infinity die rolls have different weights to them - passing a certain ARM save could ultimately be more important than hitting a cheerleader in ARO. a person is more lucky if they pass the more important rolls and failing the ones that don't matter. When coin flips/ die rolls don't actually count for anything, were not really testing Luck, were testing probability.
Statistically speaking, there is no such thing as luck. Events have a probability to take place and dice rolling is precisely a way to randomize results. Stacking mods is a way of stacking Odds in facilitating or diminishing the probability that a certain result takes place. What we consider "luck" is the all too human apreciation of the event, without analyzing the Statistical Significance of the observed event. That is how Scientific Studies determine if a factor (or variable) is directly linked to an outcome or not.
Say, are you a Pierson's Puppeteer by any chance? You'll need to read "Ringworld" to get it. Or... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teela_Brown
I'd say luck is not a thing that exists and which you can believe in. It's only a word that describes when someone successes all too often in his rolls and then we call him/her lucky and in the opposite case unlucky. Some people seem to get struck more often by fate than others, they are unlucky. In my case, I usually play vs the same player and I'd consider ourselves pretty even in experience and skill. But somehow, the last 4 matches we played the dice were all against me no matter what and I got almost tabled everytime (which hadn't happened all over the last 2 years, not due to bad mistakes I made, but due to losing ftf rolls which clearly favored me, like not hitting any shot with 4 dice on 17 and eating an aro crit in return =( I know i's just statistics and the next match it can all be over, but after this growing series of "bad luck" you slowly start to believe that the dice gods are more than just a saying =P
While I do consider myself very lucky, I unfortunately do not ascend into a godhood level of luck. While this conversation relates luck to infinity and the rolling of dice, we can look at luck in a much broader sense where "Statistical Probability" no longer applies. It's interesting to note the difference between "The chance of a die rolling a 15" and "The chance of YOU rolling a 15 in ARO on the last order when it wins you the game"
Oh no, we're talking about LUCK, the Dice Gods are VERY REAL (May their blessings always befall on the faithful.) And getting on their bad side is a curse akin to angering Greek Gods, or worse, because at least the Greek Gods struck once; the Dice Gods roll dice (and Fate is known to invoke the Ancient Rule of Re-Rolling).
I don't believe in Luck, gods, faith or fate. Or gambler's fallacies. Luck is just the human brain attempting to find a pattern in the randomness, an explanation for the chaos. "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, this is rarely true."
That year+ I wasn't able to roll over a 10 on my d20s? It ended when we added a player who was a Priest of Loki. Not the character (he played a halfling rogue). The player. He knew I was pissed by never being able to roll over a 10. So he blessed my dice for me. I started to roll normally. Which lasted for about 6 months or so (we all know Loki is fickle, and I'm not a believer worshiper). Then I started rolling shit again. I burned the dicebox I used to keep them in (a nice presentation cigar box), I washed my dice in saltwater, I put them into a big bag of salt. You see, I didn't want blessed dice, I wanted curse-free dice. After all that, they finally started to roll normally (and consistently normally). What a pain in the ass.
Infinity is very much based on random, or as you may say, luck. Good players stack the odds, but at the end of the day, the question is whether the dice roll in your favour or not. Your plan is good to let the Jaguar throw a smoke grenade from total cover because the odds will not get much better than 80%, but the order is still wasted if you roll an 18. Of course, in the long run, all players will have the same amount of crits, but the question is when they have them. Not all rolls are equal. Sometimes you just need to push that button with the last order of your last turn, but you don't make it into the 65% of likelihood of getting it done. What makes a good player is how they deal with bad die rolls. If the die rolls are getting worse and worse for me, I often snap and start taking silly risks in the belief that lady luck is the only one who can pull me out of a bad situation. Of course she will let me down time and time again. That is bad thinking. A player is better off being relaxed about the game and not caring too much. If you don't care so much, you will be unaffected by negative psychology and work on plans even if the dice are against you this game. The dice usual equal out during a game anyway, but many people don't notice because of their negative attitude. What is fascinating about Infinity is that you can still pull draws out of bad situations. I used to look at Infinity as a game that is more relaxing than chess because I can curse the dice if I lose. I can't do that anymore and find Infinity increasingly stressful, especially when I am playing against good players. I know that skill is a more important factor in the game. I am not quite sure how high it is and how it works. The many dice of GW systems should provide more equality in results than the rather flat dice of Infinity. But still I feel that there is more skill involved in Infinity. Every game has a luck-skill ratio, I would like how the different wargames fare on this issue. No, I don't believe that some players are luckier than others. Other people I play with do. My thought is that this has to do with whose luck is talked about. What I see is that die results usually equal out over the course of one game. Sometimes a player has a lucky day, but next week it will be different. What is not equal, however is obviously how important the lucky roll was.
Within a game, your results will inevitably lie outside the exact statistical likelihood of getting said results. This is good! Some people probably do see more of a positive variance than a negative one and vice versa because; life, but for the majority of us you tend to average out. I'm often told I'm lucky. I think it's more accurate to say I attempt to minimalise the impact of misfortune and take as muchbadvantage of fortune as possible. I also think that what makes a player great instead of merely good is at least in part the ability to win despite misfortune.
The Gamer is awesome, the humour that's used is very appropriate for the theme XD As for luck, I don't believe it exists but it won't stop me using the word or something similar to blame when I've been on the wrong end of 32 crits in one game.
