When gaming luck goes bad

[Mycroft Holmes]

Have you ever been going to win at a video game, only to have a random number generator or some other circumstance of pure luck snatch victory away from you? Sure you're spraying and praying but the reticule is at least 80% covering the enemy and you got no hits. What are some of your terrible bouts of bad luck in gaming?

As with most threads, this one is influenced by some recent experiences of mine. Mostly with the new X-COM.

I had a single enemy floater(not one of the advanced ones) a tier one enemy go up against a full squad of mine, all by itself. Two colonels, two majors, three captains with tier two laser weaponry and carapace armor. The floater killed 4 of my guys: a colonel, both majors and two captains. It was after a large battle so I was somewhat weakened, but for 4 turns every single shot I levied at him missed. 95% chance to hit? a miss. 80% chance to hit? a miss. Every single shot I attempted had above a 50% chance to hit and I had grunts firing twice in a single turn, a HW soldier firing twice in single turns. What are the chances of flipping a quarter and coming up heads every single time in like 40 flips. I finally killed him with a sniper colonel, but not because luck decided to stop being insane. Because the floater ran, and in chasing it I got to highground which gave me a 100% hit chance against it.

Again with X-COM(I'm pretty sure this game hates me) the first time I ran into mutons I was pretty beat up from fighting(once again as I had cleared the whole rest of the map) but luckily I had positioning on them and the only person they could hit on their first reaction turn was a support trooper who was using 'take cover' for extra defense. Again these weren't super low ranked soldiers, had two majors two captains two lts. But I had two missiles left with large AoEs. So all I had to do was wait out the turn then nuke their position and kill them all, no big deal. first enemy shoots against my hard covered soldier, misses; second shoots and misses; third shoots and hits. My soldier panics and shoots backwards hitting one of my own squad. That soldier panics and shoots another. That one panics and shoots another. On and on until there is literally only one person who did not panic. My next turn is ruined because I can no longer shoot my missiles, the mutons move up and kill three of my people basically ensuring my defeat and forcing me to reload. All because of a chain of panic resulting in my entire team basically trying to kill each other.

 

[kingthrall]

if you like this kind of random luck try myth II, having a dwarven dud moltov when a horde of warriors rushing you is quite amusing.

 

[hazabaza1]

Fallout 2, first area, 44% chance to hit, I missed 11 times in a row.
Fuck that game.

 

[krazykidd]

SMT: persona 3 and SMT: Nocturne . Things can turn sour so fast from 1 measly mistake , and that's if you are playing on normal . If you are playig on hard ( especially on nocturn ) not only will mistakes mean certain death , but things beyond your control will kill you if you are unlucky .

 

[Trippy Turtle]

Competitive pokemon and its crits. Oh god its crits.
Some idiot must have decided that it would be exciting to put every victory down to luck. They almost completely ruin the point of setting up unless you somehow trap the other player or you get extremely lucky and not get critted.

Also in FTL I laughed when I got the achievement for getting hit 5 times in a row despite having the max evasion chance.
In other games where its not a random number generator but just pure luck that something would happen its normally in aid of me. Ricochet headshots and the like.

 

[Yggdraz0r]

Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.

Many occasions where I had a hit chance of 60%+ but for the life of me I could not hit a single one of them. It is not as bad as OPs XCOM story, but then again, I had the reverse happen aswell. Tower Guard <3.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Ironically, I have an opposing experience. This is why I always play Cain in the Binding of Isaac. Because having bad luck is a statistic that WILL screw you over in items, pills, some tear effects, and drops.

 

[Joccaren]

My luck is generally exceptional in those circumstances, so no, not really.

For example, in Dwarf Fortress, I was in the second year of my new fort. Now, I never focus on getting a large military. It seems like a bit of a waste to me when I need all those people to make armour and weapons for my military. So, I had 4 melee sworddwarfs, all with only skill level 3 in swords and 1 or 2 in armour, dodging and kicking, and 2 marksdwarfs, who were my hunters and both had level 15 archery and marksmanship. I broke into the caverns. A forgotten beast came the next frame. Now, I'd been smart in how I'd broken into the caverns, so I had a hallway with a drawbridge at the end I was able to close to keep him out. Of course, I wanted to explore the caverns to get silk for my Dwarf who was in a fey mood and wanted it to make some item or other, or else he would go on an insane rampage throughout my fort. So, I sent my 4 sworddwarfs down, opened the gate, and watched what happened. Gate opened. The forgotten beast had buggered off to somewhere else in the caverns temporarily, being unable to path up to me, so I sent my dwarves out into the room that my hallway opened to. The beast came. One of my sworddwarfs ran forward to fight it, and then straight up cut of its head. No battle, just a dead Forgotten beast.
He later did the same thing to a Titan that spat poison that attacked my fort: Dodged all the poison spit, ran up to it, chopped its head off.

As if that weren't enough, that same dwarf later went on to kill another forgotten beast deeper in the Caverns. There was a pit that went down 8 layers. A forgotten beast appeared whilst my sword squad was there. They fought for a while, my Dwarves dodging everything somehow, and lightly scratching the beast until both it and my legendary dwarf were on the edge of the cliff. My Dwarf charged. He knocked the forgotten beast back, and off the cliff down the 7 layer pit where it landed on some rocks and died. Well, not instantly. It sat there for a second whilst a Giant Cave Spider came up to it, webbed it then poisoned it with its neurotoxin and killed it.

 

[Generic4me]

My luck, in any game, is always shit. Doesn't matter what game.

It's probably just me not remembering all the good things that happen, but I once played a game of FTL, and had a 95% dodge chance with my cloak on, and was facing the final boss. It fired a pretty annoying mega laser and 3 missiles, which meant like 8 or maybe even 11 projectiles, and I'll be damned if every single one of them didn't hit. That's a .05% chance of happening.

This is why I never play games that involve luck.

 

[RevRaptor]

I hear ya dude, I always save in xcom because shit like this seems to just happen at random. That said still a brilliant game and it can be kind of funny watching your entire squad devolve into muppets with guns

lol the captcha is "panic button" Thats oddly appropriate.

 

[Andy Shandy]

I think anyone who's played Civilization will know exactly what I mean when I post this picture.

 

[MarlonBlazed]

I think anyone who's played Civilization will know exactly what I mean when I post this picture.

snip

Then, as I was about to take the city, they came...

Tank stacks EVERYWHERE. I wasted my troops attempting to break into africa, and right when victory was within reach, China came and pretty much took over the entire African continent, screwing me from victory.

I don't have anything as frustrating as those but in my most recent game I was just one turn away from building a high tier wonder and someone else got it the next turn. They decided to go straight for the wonder while I was building up my work force to make it a smaller time.

 

[Lugbzurg]

I can remember getting "Robotnik" two or three times in a row in Casino Night Zone.

Anyone who's played the game will understand the problem.

 

[Ryotknife]

wait wait wait wait wait.....

there is such thing as GOOD luck?

But seriously, my luck is terrible in every game. I think my father took all of my good luck, or he ran into a serious luck tab and when i was born im now paying off his luck debt.

Shogun 2 and Europa 3 in particular. Especially in Europa when you run across the super alliance chain. As in Country A declares war against you and brings along allies B and C. Countries B and C bring along their allies, and those allies bring along their allies and so on and so forth until you are now up against 60+ countries.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

The best way to play Fallout 2 is to take the Jinxed trait and max out your luck.

You become a walking field of terrible dice rolls.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I'm reminded of the time when I played Pantheon in LoL, pulled off a clutch jump escape (He channels for 2 seconds then jumps to a place on the map that is 5500 units away, the entire map is 25000 total I am told, suffice to say that nobody can just run after you)

I managed to finish the jump on like a quarter health... Then I fucking landed on a full health WW who just so happened to be jungling at the time. Come on, i'm not playing TF here, I can't preemptively ult so I can get a better view of where to escape to. I have to pick a place on the map quickly in a bit of a panic. Crazy bad luck.

Oh and what is with people using Panth's ult as part of his burst combo? As in, they throw their cooldowns at someone and instead of waiting for the next stun/spear or y'know, use the AD and autoattack them. They decide to ult on the spot they're already standing on and it has a huge windup and can be avoided by pretty much anyone.

I can't say it's just the noobs who are trying him since he's free, it's too common.

Other than that, luck is kinda non-existant in LoL, aside from random Phage procs. Anyone who says someone was "lucky" to escape on 20HP is wrong. You just didn't have the damage son. Or the guy was cool enough to get some cheeky lifesteal in on the way out (WW is the king of this in a chase scenario)



Or you missed the final skillshot that would have killed him. That's not luck you tart, it's your own incompentence!

Oh and FTL. All my FTL playthroughs have been fucking unlucky. Once I had a full crew, with 3 Mantis' so I did the logical thing and bought a Teleporter to use them to their fullest potential. Oops, the moment you get it all three of them die when the Engine and O2 rooms get missiled the fuck out of by Random Space Asshole 2308.

Oh no, they're gonna be so scared of my 4 humans (three of whom are stationed on the ship) and one Zoltan boarding them :/

 

[scorptatious]

Fallout 2, first area, 44% chance to hit, I missed 11 times in a row.
Fuck that game.

As much as I like Fallout 2, that was not a very good area to start the game at. I mean how can you miss hitting a giant ant? Seriously.

It's funny, when I first started the game, I made a character that specialized in small guns, lockpicking, and speech. Didn't realize I was only going to get a spear at the beginning of the game. Of course it made sense in a way considering your character's background.

Ah well, once I finally got an actual gun, the game just got better from there.

On the subject of Fallout and luck in games ,when I played the first game, I got the power armor from the Brotherhood of Steel and found out how awesome it was. Not only did it gave me a fighting chance against super mutants, but it negates any damage that's caused by them. (Except for guys with flamethrowers)

Of course, that didn't stop the occasional lucky super mutant from getting a critical hit that instantly killed me at full health even with the power armor on. What the hell?

 

[Saika Renegade]

One of the funny things about turn based combat and any system where dice real or otherwise are rolled, at least to me, is how hilariously badly the dice can and will screw you over at the worst time.

If we're allowed to bring tabletop gaming into this, I played the classic FASA-era Battletech, back when the existence of the Inner Sphere ER Medium Laser was a big new deal. This is a game that runs on the 2d6 bell curve and often has a one in 36 chance of getting a result of 'screw you' on the dice, but sometimes it'll go even beyond that.

No where is this more apparent than a time where I waded into a brawl with an Axman--a Mech design wielding the franchise's first genuine giant fuckoff axe--and by all rights I should have been able to roll at least a 4 and at most a 6 or 7 on 2d6 to score hits with the axe when I and my opponent were shuffling around practically at spitting range. That's an 11/12ths chance to hit on the best chance at 4 and around 7/12ths chance on the 7.

I missed four godforsaken times in a row with that axe. That is, for the record, four hits of 13 points of potential damage each that simply didn't happen, in a game where 12 damage to the head will decapitate an enemy outright. My laser fire was almost as bad since I was putting maybe half of my shots on the target.

My opponent, on the other hand, was a Dervish. He was kicking me in the shins the whole time and in spite of weighing about ten tons less than me, was doing a really good job of kicking my ankles right out.

I still won mostly by giving up on the axe and finally getting a good large laser hit in, but most of the guys agreed that was not one of the best showings the table had seen in a while.

And somehow it's still better than Jade Hellbringer's dice.

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

in a game called MARDEK RPG: Chapter 2
there was a monster you could only fight 2 times in the game.
there was a 50% chance of that monster dropping a certain weapon i wanted.

i had to fight this monster at about 10 times to get the weapon that i had a 50% chance of getting. what are the odds of that happening