What I like is for the mobs to use approximately the same abilities available to the players in a manner analogous to how one would imagine that creature would use them.

I am absolutely not interested in any way, shape or form in competing either with NPCs with godlike abilities or matching wits against game designers.

On the other hand I would be entirely happy to have NPCs behave in a much more realistic fashion. For example, if I go through a door in a dungeon and there are 20 orcs in the room and one of them sees me, all 20 should have the immediate option to attack, except for the ones that run to fetch even more, bigger orcs.

In my opinion, that would provide all the difficulty needed to maintain constant interest.

Randomness we like (well, some of us do, sometimes): More or less random loot tables on encounters -and yes, I know I’ll get flak for this, I stand by it. Random, rare mobs appearing on long timers that you happen to come across. Random appearances of environmental effects. Random rare things you find after you tap a resource node. Things like that.

Randomness we don’t like: Balls that bounce and kill you. Being on the receiving end of a nasty string of crits + healer unable to cope. Crucial weapon misses (although we rationalize this one, is still random and nasty). And so on.

The randomness we don’t like is tied to the second part, which is: It’s not enough to throw players into situations where randomness is present – are we giving them enough tools to deal with this randomness when it’s not nice?

And I think the answer is, not all the time. When that nasty randomness overcomes the tools a player has at his disposal to deal with it, that’s when it turns sour and the player rightfully feels the game dealt him an unfair hand.

To use the bouncing ball example (I don’t know the encounter, but it’s an example): Are players given sufficient notification in advance, however you notify them, that the ball has randomly chosen to land where they are? What happens when it does, is it damage? Insta-kill? What? What’s the time frame for the player decision? Too short and he can’t react, too long and the challenge is trivialized. Can the player keep functioning with his standard M.O. of actions -while- he’s dealing with the randomness (ex., can they shoot/swing/heal while they’re repositioning? etc.)

I think you don’t see much of this nasty randomness, which, by the way, I think is necessary, because there are too many variables to consider when designing it and implementing it, and to top it off most have the potential to sour players. The solution would be to tone it down; make it easier to deal with, but keep it strictly in nasty territory. That’s an act of balance in itself, but when you set the nasty threshold so high, you naturally end up with only a handful of scenarios where you can introduce nasty randomness and get away with it. That’s why you don’t see it much.

Keep it nasty, but tone it down, and more possibilities for it to appear open up.

Is the bouncing ball now randomly bouncing towards me? If yes, then move. If no, then don’t move.

There’s no “figuring out” here. This is why random bouncing ball is boring. Yes, you make decisions, but decisions do not matter if there’s no doubt about them.

For example:
Is the bouncing ball now randomly bouncing towards me? If yes, then move. If no, then don’t move.

You do seem to understand the gist of my post with your discussion on predictability. Predictable content requires less decision-making so a players internal flowchart will be small (and arguably boring). Unpredictable content, like PvP, requires more decision-making so a players internal flowchart will be large.

What players actually want is not “random”; what players truly want is a bigger flowchart. In the end, every game is nothing but a flowchart of if/then statements for players to run through when deciding on an action.

This is SOOOOOO wrong. Nobody want a flowchart. Flowcharts aren’t exciting. What players want, is the excitement of figuring it (whatever “it” is) out. You don’t figure out a flowchart, you just follow it. Similarly, you don’t figure out a random bouncing ball.

Now, if the ball was not simply random, but predictable, it would be interesting… for as long as players don’t learn to predict it.

So to make raids actually more interesting, devs need to add some random element that creates predictable patterns, but that are (unpredactably) different every time. The first company to invent such a thing (I have no idea if this is even possible) will bring WoW to its knees.

“From a designers point of view, why spend time creating a masterpiece of gameplay when poop and balls keeps them subscribing?”

This made my morning.

I’m not sure that sentence is grammatically correct, but your verbiage makes me tingle.

On topic though, randomness is just lazy design. We are talking about WoW players though, for whom collecting poop and dodging bouncing green balls constitutes pure gaming goodness. From a designers point of view, why spend time creating a masterpiece of gameplay when poop and balls keeps them subscribing?