 How to build an app/service that makes all users feel equally smart?
inerte: How do you reward random difficulty?People play games because it reward them. The learning process, the milestones, the journey.Let's take your idea of randomness and apply to a genre, space combat. Let's say most people are conditioned to think, if they see ShipA bigger than ShipB, that ShipA is slower, and it's harder to kill. Now let's apply "randomness", and now the size of the ship isn't related to its speed, offensive, or defensive power.How do you think a player would react if he can't make a choice to overcome the problem? Does he approach the ship as if it had a lot of hitpoints, does he circle-strafe, does he shoot and roll?What I am trying to say is that a random set of conditions doesn't allow the player to feel more prepared for the next problem. If you can't reward the player, you don't have a game.Also, Wikipedia and the dictionary mention many times the necessity of having rules for a "game".So let's scrap the idea of removing skills in games.What rewards skilled and non-skilled, smart and dumb players in the same amount? Gambling. More specifically, gambling where the outcome is truly (at least more) random, like Lottery, as opposed to blackjack (where at least there's some strategy involved in not-losing everything so fast).