But this fascination is hugely inferior in a SP video game against a pre-defined enemy AI.
Thank you for the added explanation. I think I understand your point and I see where you are coming from.
I think there is a balance to be had. A game should have enough certainty in its mechanics for you to plan ahead with a reasonable degree of confidence. This can be achieved either through a high probability of success (eg. 90% chance to hit) or low cost of failure (it only cost you 3 action points to try to trip your enemy) ...or both.
This is necessary for a game to have an element of strategy. To give an example of what I mean, imagine a skill that had a 20% chance to hit, costs 12AP, and deals 1000 damage. You can't count on it killing your target (because it probably won't), but you also can't plan around it not doing anything because you're out of Action Points for that turn and can't do anything about it. It results in a scenario where you just cross your fingers and hope to try again next time if it doesn't work.
On the flip side, you need some amount of uncertainty in order for a game to be interesting. If there was a 100% chance to hit and your weapon dealt the same damage every time, fights would before extremely tedious. You'd know ahead of time that you can kill each zombie in precisely 3 attacks, so your course of action becomes obvious. Given the chance to "fail" on any given step of your plan makes the game more interesting to play because you have to take into account the fact that something could go wrong at any given step and what you are going to do about it.
If there are too few random elements or they are too insignificant, then you know exactly how each fight will end before it even starts, making things somewhat anticlimactic.
Edit: I should clarify that my main objection to randomness in the previous reply was the notion that it should be prevalent enough to determine the outcome of fights. I do believe randomness should determine how fights are played out, and possibly determine the outcome occasionally in cases where it would have been a really close call to begin with. However, I feel you should be able to approach any encounter with 99%+ confidence of the ultimate outcome, just not exactly how you'll end up getting there or how easy it will be.
I personally feel DOS is in a good spot right now when it comes to balancing the two, but then again, I played a Rogue/Ranger without companions, so I never experienced the combat with spells. Maybe I would also feel that they need more randomness, but I am inclined to guess that I would be satisfied with the chance to burn/stun/freeze that they have right now.
