Reply: King of Tokyo:: General:: Re: This is why I don't play luck-y games

by KingCroc

Scorpion0x17 wrote:

There's one point you seem to keep on either ignoring or not seeing the significance of, Clarence.

And that's the thing several of us have pointed out:

You have to do more in this game than simply collect VPs.
You also have to avoid losing health.

So your loss did not come down to simply what happened in that final roll, whatever the odds may or may not be.

It came down to your failure to preserve your health.
And that occurred earlier in the game, and over the course of numerous rolls.

You see, because the dice rolls feed directly in to various game states (your VPs, health, and energy) they become connected events, and not simple isolated probabilities.

This means that you can not say your loss came down to a single dice roll.
Rather it came down to the cumulative effect of all the dice rolls, and all the decisions, made throughout the entire game.

King Of Tokyo is not a game of pure luck, like tossing a coin.
It's a game of strategy, skill, and risk management, like poker.

These are the aspects of the game you seem to be failing to comprehend.

It seems like a classic problem Control Gamers have. They latch onto a specific course of action and when it doesn't pan out, they often blame the game for not bending to their will.

I've seen it happen plenty of times, and while fans of KoT might argue that the game is about a constantly evolving game state where adaptability is key, a Control Gamer doesn't seek to adapt. They seek to follow a specific path and if the path doesn't work out, it usually is blamed on the elements they can't control.

In fact, it's a perfectly valid complaint (to some degree). There are plenty of games where a player can achieve these levels of control. Dice games are not those types of games by their very nature. So the OP is unlikely to like the game as long as it refuses to bend to his will, and dice won't do that. Dice are all about probability, and in KoT, it's not just your dice, but the dice of your opponents that matter. It is, from a Control Gamers standpoint, very chaotic and random. You can argue about probability, multiple decision points, and ignoring the game state all you like, but these things don't matter to Control Gamers. Control Gamers formulate their strategy at the start, refuse to deviate from it, and if it works, they feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment. If it fails, they usually feel as if something is wrong with the game.

I have a friend who isn't a Control Gamer, but was absolutely convinced that he should always enter and control Tokyo. "It's called King of Tokyo," he would say. "Why would I leave Tokyo?" After a few games where he was always the first monster knocked out of the early game, he realized his mistake and changed his strategy accordingly.

For me, KoT is a sweet spot game. It certainly has its chaotic moments, but in order to win consistently, a player must balance probability, risk, reward, long term versus short term, etc. For the OP, it sounds like none of this really appeals to him. His only mistake, as far as I'm concerned, is assuming the own superiority of his opinion. So much so that he wants to jump into the internet and tell people how the game failed him and seems genuinely surprised that fans of the game don't agree with him.

But I guess that's how the internet works.