Ok, so it turns out there is one (debatably) important factor that I didn’t consider: consistency. While a character like Bowser may move a lot, it varies WILDLY from turn to turn. This means that in a situation where you’re close to the star and only need to move a little bit, Bowser isn’t actually that helpful. While someone like Daisy, who only has 3 and 4 on her dice, can’t move very far, she can guarantee you at least 3 spaces, which can sometimes be very helpful. Since the standard die is already pretty good on its own, you could make the argument that having an extra tool like this in your bag for select situations is more beneficial than a really good but somewhat unreliable die that you can use every single turn. I’d need a more sophisticated simulation to see how often situations like this actually come up and wether or not it’s a good trade off, but who knows, maybe I’ll come back to this in the future!
Hehe you're kind of right to factor in things like consistency, but also you want to factor in "Options" as well. I think the consistency people are on a right track, but over committing to how important 3s and 4s are compared to high and low numbers in Mario Party. One major part of Mario Party is being able to have options on what you can do, like in any other Mario Party (including 9 and it's infamous 0-1 block), those items are options. You may use a Poison mushroom on yourself to force yourself to roll a low number so you stall a bit before Bowser or avoid a trap set by a player, or stall for a star space knowing next turn the star may spawn in front of you or before a junction. Otherwise you use mushroom/golden mushroom if you want to roll big to move around the board and increase the odds of a star snipe. Characters like Luigi can use his block to simulate either rolling high and low or use the regular to roll average. Shyguy and Daisy may be consistent, but they ONLY roll average and unless the board has every 3 or 4 spaces with solid spaces, people can calculate exactly how many turns it'd take a Daisy or shyguy to reach the star. the math doesn't look good for them as Bowser getting a 10 in 2 turns means Shyguy needs 5 turns using his dice to catch up. so that gives Bowser up to 3 chances to roll the 10 needed to catch up to or pass Shy guy (it's worse with Daisy, who needs 4 turns just to reach him in one). and strategically, for every turn Bowser or DK roll a 0, you know exactly what's going to happen to you, so you either zoom way past them, or you get the effect you want. AND if you want average...just roll the regular dice. Daisy and Shyguy don't get the option to "just roll a regular dice" cause they can ONLY roll a regular dice. so even with the consistency, that consistency comes with just increasing the odds that they move the average everyone else already moves, but that's all they get. Other characters can get something no one else can and plan accordingly. (or in cases like Mario and Yoshi.... they both have 7s on thier dice block so that 1/6 chance is still 2 turns worth of a guaranteed Daisy or Shy guy roll to catch up, but if Daisy or Shyguy need the 7 spaces...or anything above 5.... just gotta roll the regular die like everyone else. they won't be catching the star faster than anyone else, even with DK's 4 0s....he still out paces their 6 turns of movement in 2 turns...
@@MarioMastar You do realize we are making the same argument for items, right? That argument works for everyone, regardless of character. And no one is saying daisy or shyguy rolls their die every turn. You know that, right? Since you responded to me before, right after I even said that, so... Nice strawman there. At every point, we have said the character die is good for getting you where you need to be on the board, and the default die has ALREADY been touted as a decent die, so it can be used in every other case... It's seems like what I said before... Like you read numbers, but haven't actually played the game, because, once again, you ignore the map itself and its spaces, and tunnel vision on raw numbers and the star. Though this time you DID mention traps, and the need to avoid them, so good for you, but like I said before, with a consistent die, you will better be able to land on item spaces that will give you mushrooms, either ones that will give you the speed to get past traps or ones to slow you down before a trap, or whatever other reason you need the mushrooms for.
Super Mario Party isn't the only Mario Party game where your character choice has an actual effect on gameplay (though it is by far the most pronounced one). Mario Party 7 has Character Orbs, of which each character can only have one of; for example, Mario and Luigi get the Fireball Orb whereas Toad and Toadette get the Triple Mushroom Orb. Super Mario Party Jamboree also has the strange quirk that any Jamboree Buddy that spawns cannot be a character that is already being played, and every Jamboree Buddy has a unique effect, so there's theoretically strategy in character selection there as well.
Huh, I thought they would be able to, since the single player mode does have kamek make a copy of whoever you’re playing, is that exclusive to single player?
@@DavidAnderson-cw7oq You absolutely can play the Showdown Minigames with their respective characters; the version of the character running the minigame will become a desaturated clone. But on the board, this doesn't happen, and they just won't show up
The Buddy is a resource equally accessible to any player, though. So while you may pick a certain character specifically because you don't want them to show up as the Buddy during the game, that will affect you just as equally as all other players. So it's not really a strategic choice, just a passive gameplay influence.
In Mario party 2 and 3, Whomp will occasionally appear as the one who predicts a winner, and will always give 10 coins to Mario, even if he is in first place. So playing Mario gives a slight advantage, unless you are playing on Bowser land, where Whomp doesn’t appear. I have no idea why Whomp is such a Mario Fanboy. Also, certain cpu characters will prioritize certain items.
Even though Shy Guy is mostly in C tier, he is probably one of the best characters in the game. If you want a 4, choose his dice, otherwise roll standard. His best trait is consistency, which unfortunately wasn't accounted for in this video. Edit: How does this have more likes than the pinned creator's comment when my comment came out a couple hours earlier? How?
Consistency is also complicated in this game by partners who will roll an extra dice with you. I switch from consistency to efficiency when I get a partner.
3 and 4 aren't valuable enough to give consistency points as you either generally want to move many spaces, or not at all. All characters roll an average of 3 or 4 by using the default blocks. but what other characters have that Shy guy and Daisy don't is they have a higher chance of rolling high or low numbers than those two, who have a LOWER chance than average of rolling those numbers. So if you need to stall for the next star space, or you're trying to snipe a Star with a high roll. those two have only the base die and hope they roll high, the same thing everyone else would do. thier die doesn't help them while it MAY help other characters. Hehe you mention people aren't accounting for consistency, but "Options" are another factor that isn't being accounted for. "Does my character provide unique opportunities to control my outcome that no other character can do?" For most characters the answer is yes, be it rolling a 0 to stay on thier space (stalling for star spaces), or rolling a 6 or higher to move many more spaces than others, OR having a hgiher chance of rolling a 5 or 6, or a higher chance of rolling a 0 or 1. Those are moments where you can strategically control your position. You can't do so with a 3 or 4 as there's very few situations where "I want to move the average spaces I would've with a dice roll". It's a very particular moment where you're exactly 4 spaces away or 3 spaces away from something, and while it's possible your opponents may roll just 1s or 2s all game and you can keep up with the 4s to get way ahead, people will know exactly how many turns it'll take to reach the star and just have to outroll you ONCE to get there first. (especailly in Bowers and DK's case where thier rolls make them go more than twice as far, even 3x as far, that's 3 turns Shyguy needs to catch up with 1 good 10 from Bowser and DK) and the worst part, there's NOTHING Shy can can do to take advantage of those odds. can't roll low to stall, can't roll higher than 5 or 6 like the normal die. SO.... what are you going to do? If rolling nothing but 4 every game lead to a guaranteed win, then there you have it. but even just TWO 10s is 5 turns to catch up (or 6 for Daisy). that's not an advantage. Heck even Luigi getting a 7 is 2 Daisy turns and getting a 5 or 6, Luigi has a nearly 50/50 chance of rolling higher than average, so if he needs to move, he can. if he need to stall, he can. if he just wants to roll average, he can. Daisy and Shyguy...can ONLY move average.
@@MarioMastar Only moving average doesn't affect consistency. Consistency is being able to most the time have the same outcome, which Shy Guy succeeds in. My point wasn't "Consistency matters more than movement." My point was "If this expirement were to happen again, try to fit in consistency." Shy Guy is one of the best characters, and that's because His dice can be used safely in most situations. You compared consistency to movement, instead of consistency to consistency. Comparing consistency to consistency would be saying Bowser is better than Koopa because he gets high numbers 50% of the time instead of 16.6%. Sure, Shy Guy can't move fast, but you aren't picking Shy Guy if you want to move fast. You're choosing Shy Guy to land on that Ally Space or VS space or event space. To come to that outcome you need luck (or items), which you also need to move far. Also, you mentioned Daisy being similiar, which isn't true because Daisy has significantly less consistency. In you're argument, fair to see the two as similiar. In mine, a lot less so.
I feel like this approach massively overlooked the fact that in practice, Super Mario Party, coins are quite abundant, and gaining and losing coins from character dice blocks is a nearly irrelevant game factor. Weighing the coin option at 30% feels to me like about 30% too much. Additionally, Stars cost only 10 coins in Super Mario Party. Because Stars are so cheap, your access to Stars is the main limiting factor in how many of them you can get, rather than your ability to afford them. Having too few coins to afford a Star means that you probably bought so many Stars that you're in a safe position for victory already. This video also ignores the fact that certain dice blocks are good at outperforming the normal dice block in certain circumstances. For example, Daisy is put at the second lowest position by your tier list, but her dice block is the only one in the game with a minimum value higher than 1, boosting up all the way to 3, even. If all you need on your dice block is a 3 or greater to reach the Star (after accounting for any items or allies), then Daisy's die is what you would pick, every time, given the choice. Shy Guy is similarly valuable in his 5/6 chance of giving you a 4. If a 4+ is what you need, then I don't care if my other die face is 0, because any roll less than that is equally bad, I don't get to the Star. Other characters' dice are useful in the way that they differ from the normal dice block. For 6 characters (Luigi, Waluigi, Yoshi, Rosalina, Koopa Troopa, and Bowser Jr.), their main strength lies in their 1/6 chance of being able to roll a 7+ die face. While it's true that if you need a 7+, you'd choose their die over the standard die, that 1/6 of it working pales in comparison to the likes of Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Bowser, and Boo giving you better odds of a 7+ roll. A tier list should take into account the fact that these four characters outclass a lot of the other characters. Wario and Dry Bones join them if you're looking for increased odds of a 6+, while Lugi, Waluigi, and Hammer Bro join in with helping with 5+, but admittedly being outclassed by basically everyone I mentioned before. The ability to roll low is a sometimes desirable trait. Your tier list ranks Monty Mole above Goomba, even though both dice would never ever be picked for their expected ability to outperform the average dice roll of the normal die, and would instead be picked based on their ability to roll a 0. Goomba outperforms Monty Mole in this way. The strength of every character's dice block is their increased odds of doing something the normal dice block can't do, or is outright impossible for it to do, while this video mistakenly assumes every dice block is trying to be useful in the same two circumstances, one of which is largely irrelevant. This video did not address Partner Party (which is understandable, it's not the standard mode), but I'd thought I'd address how characters' dice change in that mode. In that mode, you sum both character's dice, and then move on a grid, needing to land exactly on the Star space in order to buy it. In that mode, a charcter's bias toward rolling an even or odd number becomes the most important factor. Two characters with solely even faces, like Peach and Shy Guy, can guarantee that you'll move even, rather than the 50/50 chance of rolling even if either character uses a dice block that's equally distributed between even and odd. This is also why none of the characters in the game have an all-odd dice block. It would be too powerful to be able to guarantee an odd roll (using one all-even die and one all-odd die), since it would mean that you could always land on a space within 2 rolls. (If you need to move an even number of spaces, and roll odd off of the 50/50, then next turn you'll need to roll odd to reach your target space). This radically changes the tier list, and you were correct to not present it in the same video as the normal tier list.
Yeah gets into a lot of "Theory vs practice". It's easy to get into the numbers and assumptions, but in practice (like actual practice), the ultimate thing about Mario Party is the factors you CAN control that determine the outcome of each board. E.g. a lot of people say Daisy is better because she's consistent, but her consistency gives her "less options" than other characters because on average, she's rolling the same average as everyone else with normal dice and can't roll higher or lower. Situationally this makes her very consistent, but it's comparable to items that make or break the luck factor in every other Mario Party. If you need to go far, use a mushroom, if you need to stall, use a poison shroom on yourself. otherwise, just roll the die. Very rarely are you moving a median number like 4-5-6 deliberately (unless you're using the super mini mushroom but you do really want to roll a 10 with it so you can make the mini-minigames.) but even then, 4-5-6 out of10 are solid spaces to move each turn in regular Mario Party. if the limit is 1-6 though, moving 3 turns is normally fine, but the problem is many characters have options to move 5 or more as an option and they quickly outpace Daisy and Shyguy as a result (2 10s will take 5 or 6 turns to catch up to the same space). and as you only need really to pass the Star space, that's why there's greater weight in rolling high. (like you said, you can easily get tons of coins, just do well in minigames). So while Daisy and Shy guy may be consistent, the situations where they would need to move that average with advantage assumes everyone else is moving slower, rolling low numbers all the time and that's very unlikely. similarly if they NEED to roll low, they just gotta hope they do, as they have a lower chance of rolling low or high than everyone else, giving them less "options". It's kind of like everyone gets mushrooms and Poison shrooms except Daisy and Shyguy, who only get like a block that can roll a 5. That's nice if you're exactly 5 spaces away from the star, but.... a mushroom can get you up to 15 spaces further. and a poison shroom will let you stall for a turn guaranteed. Now 5 is a decent number, but 3 though.... it takes 3 turns for Daisy to catch up to ONE 10 roll from Bowser or DK. so if you need to move fast (which you usually do to get the star) Daisy and Shyguy are the ONLY characters who have a 0% chance of sniping a star (well really a 1/6 as they have to roll a regular die and 5 or 6 to move further than average). Arguably Rosalina has a similar issue with her 0, 1,2,3,4, 8 but the 0,1,2 part means you can use her to have a higher chance of rolling a low number. think of it as a poison shroom. so if you want to stall or don't mind stalling, but might get that big 8, you can use her. You have to be 3 spaces away from a star or want to move exactly 3 or 4 spaces to make use of Daisy and Shy guys dice. HOWEVER..... with partners.... Daisy and Shyguy suddenly become the BEST characters as now that consistency matters cause you're actively spending something to get more rolls. so getting a 6 and a 0 on DK is not really helpful at all since the point of 0s is to stay still, not flub your roll increase. that guaranteed 3 and 4 will guarantee the movement you need. and if you can guarantee a roll with 2 dice or 3, THEN Daisy and Shyguy's consistency pays off in spades. but as a single die...it's useless.
I think the odd-even analysis in Partner Party is kinda useless. Getting an ally adds either 1 or 2 to your roll, which immediately makes the all-even/all-odd die lose its advantages. You COULD try not to get any ally at all to salvage its advantage. But the fact that allies help you move further is too much of an advantage to pass by.
This comment said almost everything I wanted to say, and saved me the effort of typing it all out myself. Thank u so much, I honestly wish this comment was the top comment as it summarizes nearly everything that this video overlooked. Tho I did wanna add one thing: U mentioned how consistency is often a good thing, and ur right, but polarizing rolls can also be useful. Although the cases are generally rare, sometimes characters have something right in front of them that they want to avoid, either by going over it or staying behind it. Like maybe there’s a bowser space 3 or 4 spots in front of them, or possibly there’s multiple negative spots in the range they would normally expect to get from a roll. In this case, the character would want a dice block that moves either very far or not far at all, kinda like Bowser’s, DK’s, or Dry Bones’. It’s still “consistency” in a sense, but instead of consistent median rolls, it’s consistent non-median rolls. There are probably several other situations similar to this that involve other character’s dice, I’m not gonna get super deep into it but u get the idea, it’s really hard to make such a general analysis of dice blocks when many important decisions in each game are anything but general, and randomly Rosalina’s weird block is 10x better than Bowser’s or Daisy’s.
You are missing the hole point though, Bowser’s dice gives u a better chance to roll higher. Maybe in a single circomstance you prefer having the certanty of rolling at least a certain number, buy overall you will perform better with Bowser. What you said is like saying that you prefer playing poker with the certainty of having a pair than having a better chance (than the other players) to have a poker
@ I feel like highly overestimating how important it is that bowser has the highest average roll (and by extension underestimating the different strengths of the other characters’ dice).
Daisy's Dice is usually considered the best (especially since you also always have the normal die to choose from)... not because of overall movement, but because of consistency. 3,3,3,3,4,4. All basically the average roll of the normal die. You won't be making big moves (with it alone) but you will be moving consistently.
I thought the more consistent characters like Daisy might do better as we increased the turn count, but based on the simulation Daisy is actually kinda trash. Someone like Boswer may only move 50%, of the time, but when he does he moves over twice as far as Daisy does, so in the end it’s still better. Based on my data, Daisy’s actually the 2nd worst!
@@TheChiptide Like I said, Daisy is not good because of ability to move a lot, but because of consistency. Like, say you have the coins, and are 3 spaces away from the next star. What would you want to roll, given any of the three choices: Bowsers dice, the default dice, or daisy's dice? Bowser's dice is only 50% able to get you there, and even 33% to lose you the coins to get it. The default dice is only 50% to get you there. But Daisy's dice is 100% to get you there. In a game of RNG, that consistency is key, especially as you said, the default dice is already pretty good, so as Daisy you just roll the default dice, but when you NEED the consistency, NEED a 3 or a 4, you roll Daisy's dice... Looking at an article I saw with a quick google search... this is a stat all dice have, and it's called *variance* , and Daisy's dice has the lowest variance. Because what you don't see with just a simulation is what each roll each turn, where that places you on each map each turn. In Mario Party, that matters, and that all depends on the roll of the dice.
@@TheChiptide Like I said, Daisy is not good because of ability to move a lot, but because of consistency. Like, say you have the coins, and are 3 spaces away from the next star. What would you want to roll, given any of the three choices: Bowsers dice, the default dice, or daisy's dice? Bowser's dice is only 50% able to get you there, and even 33% to lose you the coins to get it. The default dice is only 50% to get you there. But Daisy's dice is 100% to get you there. In a game of RNG, that consistency is key, especially as you said, the default dice is already pretty good, so as Daisy you just roll the default dice, but when you NEED the consistency, NEED a 3 or a 4, you roll Daisy's dice... Looking at an article I saw with a quick google search... this is a stat all dice have, and it's called *variance* , and Daisy's dice has the lowest variance. Because what you don't see with just a simulation is what each roll each turn, where that places you on each map each turn. In Mario Party, that matters, and that all depends on the roll of the dice.
The regular die performing so well has other implications. Because another important thing to consider is precision. There will be many times when you want to land on a specific spot and some character benefit a tone from having a regular die plus a more consistent one. As such, they can move with an A tier efficiency while having the option in the bag to increase their chance of landing on that one spot they need.
With the addition of partners giving you an extra 1 or 2 move. It randomizes the odd or even chance anyways. So more moves is actually always better if you have even 1 partner
@@tommyle3243 I think as a partner, Daisy and Shyguy would be top tier. I keep wall of texting why Daisy and Shy guy aren't good despite consistency due to the lack of options on thier part, but guaranteeing adding a 3 or 4 to their roll if they can double roll would bump them up a lot of tiers because if you're double rolling, you're going for high numbers and that actually starts to make them far more useful. a double roll with DK would be a complete waste if you get a 0 or LUigi's 1, I didn't think of that in my text, but you're the first person to mention partners, so the others didn't either.
@@MarioMastar They're an integral part of the game. We didn't think we had to. Just like with items, and map states and spaces you want to be on or want to avoid. Just because you didn't think of any of this doesn't mean no one else did... You just now thinking of them shouldn't do anything but make you realize how silly you were being by "keep wall of texting" Also, what do you mean by "double roll". That sounds like the mechanic of the new game, Super Mario Party Jamboree, but in Super Mario Party, allies just add a 0-2 to your roll (and also give you the option to roll their die instead of the default die or your character's die). So, really having Daisy as an ally does nothing that being Daisy and having an ally wouldn't do... so I once again have to wonder if you've ever actually played the game...
Mario Party isn't a singleplayer game of snakes and ladders with no dice choice. Situational dice are not supposed to be used every turn but in the right situation. If a die is good depends on how far a star is away, how far other players are from it, if you are in the lead or losing, if there is a specific tile you want to hit and more. This approach is way too simple to get any useful information
I'd say all that's missing is "die consistency" i.e. the variance the special die have. Being able to hit (or avoid) spaces almost for certain is arguably more important than just travelling the fastest.
@@KGafterdark Consistency and variance are two different things, a dice only rolling 1 or 6 is fairly consistent for hitting specific numbers but has a higher variance than a D6. High consistency is good for hitting specific spaces, having a choice between high and low variance is good for playing safe/risky depending on if you're ahead or behind. However, I do agree that the consistency is the most important factor missed and applied to the actual rules of the game would get pretty close to the real answer. He does try to factor it in in his newest video but in a simplified version of the game that's barely recognizable. It gets closer but is still very far off the actual game
There’s something I wanted to add in regards to the consistency argument that I haven’t seen said yet. Let say you’re playing as shy guy with his 5/6 chance of getting a 4 and 1/6 of getting a 0. If there’s a space you want to land on 4 tiles away, you can have a very high chance of landing on it and it can be tried again next turn. You also have to factor in the golden pipes that you can get from good luck spaces that take you directly to the star. With character like shy guy, you can roll the regular dice block and if there’s ever something of interest 4 spaces away, you roll the shy guy block. I think this makes him significantly better than he would appear from you method.
I've only played Mario Party 2 times in my life, both times I chose Bowser because he's my main in smash Ultimate, and won both times. I now know it wasn't just dumb luck.
I like the different dice and I DEFINITELY love that they don’t always use it. Changing the formula is what keeps Mario Party fresh and keeps us buying it
So theres actually 2 that I really wanna bring up. Daisy & shy guy!!! While they don't travel the most distance they have insane utility in that the shy guy can force a 4 space movement if you're ever 4 spaces away from a spot you want to land on... This has come in handy every single game I've used him no less than once, but often more with special spaces like friend tiles. Daisy has a similar use with a 2/3 chance at 3 & 1/3 chance at four. There's still a statistical chance of failure for either roll unlike the shy guy, but it does give you massively increased odds of landing on a tile of either of these distances double for 4 & quadruple for 3. While moving far is important in Mario party, where you land is often more important. Which is why these two are actually two of the best for many of the maps
Joining the shy guy supremacists here. The consistency of almost always knowing exactly what space I’ll land on turns Mario party into a strategy game, not a luck game
Tbh Hammer Bro might be the only character whose dice is objectively worse than someone else's. Dry Bones has 111666, which is basically hammer bro but with higher rolls.
In theory, yes, but that's probably too complex a decision matrix. The Daisy die, for example, is only better when "3 or more" or "exactly 4" is your target. Barring the ability to look at the board each turn, EV is everything.
I think the thing about 0 move rolls is that, for example, going from movement of 1 to a movement of 0 is not the same as going from 2-1, since going to a new space usually does something (eg. give or take coins), and you wont get that effect if you stay still. Because of this fact, you might want to have your character move AN amount more or less often. This depends on the map, and the ratio of good or bad things happening on new spaces which would determine how preferable/non-preferable moving is, but i think that this is a third factor that is important to weigh. (among all of the other things brought up in the comments). Something like a third metric to take into account is the percent chance of movement (%rolls >0). Love the video! glad I found this channel, its cool to see that you did your due diligence to this problem.
Haven't watched the full video yet, but it seems to me that two things are important along with mere speed. Consistency and the ability to stand still. Consistency is Hammer bro's ability to 100% go less than 6, 50% go EXACLY 5, and 50% get less than two. (not to mention he can stand still, but not consistently) Having this consistency on hand ALONG SIDE the A-tier regular die undoubtably has great power. Under these conditions dice can be seen as having interesting utility, and Donky Kong and pDiddy cong are both very powerful with great consistency and the ability not to move.
Idc what any statics say, I like Goomba, and he’s great to play because he’s Goomba, no one can change my mind. This was very interesting though, and I’m glad I found this, thank you
5:30 I want to point out that, in a real game rolling low is almost never _really_ a use case for the character dice anyway. since as the game goes on you'll inevitably get ally characters added to your team, each one adding 1d2 to each of your rolls, so strategically choosing to roll the player dice quickly becomes impossible.
goomba's my favorite! Normal die with the 1 & 2 being 0 instead (with bonus coins) is very useful, especially if you don't have an ally and 1 of the next 2 spaces suck
Honestly I want them to bring character dice blocks back but make them a setting you turn on or off like how in Jamboree you can change settings before starting the game like where minigames are random or votes, bonus stars are on or off, etc.
I would love to hear a more in depth mathematical explanation as to why more turns can change an average performance. My intuition tells me that with enough 10 turn games, a die would have the same average roll as opposed to 20 turn games
I supose, that change in placement is actualy just a сalculation error, chances are just geting closer to first metod mentioned in video, also, fact that computers are not truly random may also cause some anomalies in calculations
@@6n-thorus945 Computers _are_ truly random in every meaningful way - aside from modern pseudorandom generators being very good, they sample from a source of true or functionally-indistinguishable-from-true randomness. (The exact temperature reported by some internal sensor, the exact time since the computer was turned on by human choice+unpredictable clock drift, optical quantum fluctuations in a tiny beam of light, electrical quantum fluctuations, etc.)
It all lies in what is referred to as the rule or law of large numbers. The more times a random event happens, the more likely it is to be closer to the actual average. I saw this happen in real life as I was watching some people play Magic: the Gathering, it was a 3 player game, and a move was made that made them have to pass out 300 objects to the 3 players at random and I, as a mathematician, told them to just give each player 100, but they insisted on rolling a die, and when it was all over, they all had 100 plus or minus 2. At the beginning it looked like one player was getting ahead, but then it all evened out, and they wasted like 10 min rolling a die 300 times. Anyways, all of this to say that a 10 turn game is likely to have more variation than a 20 turn game, which will make the average of a character like Bowser worse as he will only move 2/3 turns on average, but with a small number of turns, it is more likely that it will be lower than that.
In Mario Party 7 for Nintendo GameCube it also matters a lot which character you choose because all characters have their own character-specific items, so-called Character Orbs. For example Mario and Luigi have the Fireball Orb to steal coins from others while Toad and Toadette have the Triple Shroom Orb to double their Dice Blocks for 3 turns.
What's actually interesting is that even though statistics may not always factor into real games, just give a likely average, one of the things about DK that makes him a definitive top tier over Bowser in shorter games is the fact that those +5 coins and 0s kind of indicate that if you don't need to move that particular turn, and want to try your luck at getting coins, you can reliably do so. A 0 just repeats the space you're currently standing on, so DK has an option to farm the blue space or a lucrative happening space he's on to give himself a bonus if it's unlikely he's going to reach a star in time and knows the other star space may be nearer to his current position. He can otherwise choose to just use the normal die like you said. MOST characters would prefer the normal Die over their custom one. There is the strategic factor for the dice rolls and what they may mean on a turn to turn basis over normal dies, but the characters who have the options. Though that said, what makes Bowser, Boo and the other character with higher than average rolls so strong is the extremity of thier rolls still allows them to accomplish the same thing DK can situationally but... with a slightly higher odds of actually moving if you want to move. I'd almost argue Diddy could be a contender for the best character because those 3 7s and 3 0s (with one being a +2 coins) makes his dice the safest for when you WANT to use it. as if you're content with your space but also may want to move far, you have a 50/50 chance of either happening and can plan accordingly (and the guaranteed 7s means you know EXACTLY what spaces you'll land on, so you can guarantee you land 7 spaces away or repeat until you do...shame this game doesn't have MP8's lucky spaces. XD) But yeah, even factoring in strategy and board design and such, I think the tier list may still be the same. I'd personally have put Luigi a bit higher because of his "either low or high" similar to Diddy, so there's a reason to use his dice over the standard based on your situation, but most characters do seem like they don't have a reason to ever use thier die for the 1/6 chance something good happens. If it's not 50/50 or BIG pay out like DK and his 2 10s which makes up for his 4 zeros (and 4 zeroes is good. high chance to repeat the space you're on), it's just not worth it over a regular dice. you can't predict where you'll land as they're all too arbitrary.
Just as consistency is an important value when weighing the dice, utility is also surprisingly useful. DKs dice was a favourite of mine because of its reliability to not move and potentially farm coins and spaces, which can amount to bonus stars.
3:26 Actually, for whatever reason, on the Kamek's Tantalizing Tower/Tantalizing Tower Toys map (the one with a lot of gold that changes star prices) you can have a 30-turn game. It's only on that one though, which is kinda disappointing.
IMO the best way to test if any character has an advantage would be to set up a gauntlet of all-CPU games in an emulator and then try to measure the win rate of different characters
As soon as started talking about how do we combine these 2 results, I immediately amd excitedly said out loud "oh is the desciscion matrix back!?". And I don't know how to feel about that lol.
Hammer bro is my favorite character… I know he’s annoying and stuff in actual Mario games, but he has one of my favorite enemy designs, just behind para-beetle. Yes, I’m a fan of mediocre enemy designs
Fun fact: Super Mario Party wasn't the first Mario Party game to have a tier list. Mario Party 7 had diffrent items per character. Here's the tier list just to know. F tier- Vaccum Orb (Wario and Waluigi). Unless you get it for free via orb space, it's very bad. You either have a 50/50 to gain or lose coins (if you buy it as anything other than 1st) or a 25% to gain coins, 25% chance to break even and a 50% to lose coins (if you buy it at 1st). D tier- Fireball Orb (Mario and Luigi). You lose your ability to use ALL green orbs (the movement items like mushrooms and other defensive/helpful items), for an ability to steal 10 coins if you pass someone, which you might just miss anyway. C tier- Egg Orb (Yoshi and Birdo). Can be used to steal placed orbs (basecally atacking item you have to either land/pass through to lose coins than can be placed). It can be really good, but also depends on chance. It can also steal your own orbs. B tier- Flower Orb (Peach and Daisy). Allows you to get 3 coins for every space you pass and skips red orbs (orbs you pass through and lose coins/hinder you and is placed by other players). Red orbs are really good on most boards, and down right expected on some (like Pagoda Peak). Plus, who doesn't love free money? The only down side is you might roll low. A tier- Triple Shroom Orb (Toad and Toadette). A mushroom (the equivelent of a double dice in this game) for three turn in a row. The only disadvantages are: 1. You can't pass red orbs (See B tier for explenation), which sucks for some boards (lile Pagoda Peak), and 2. You can't use green orbs (see D tier for explenation). But still, 2 dice blocks for 3 turns sounds like a steal! S tier- Magic Orb (Boo and Dry Bones). Whoo boy, you might ask "how can this be better than 3 double dice blocks?". Well, allow me to explain. This one orb DOUBLES YOU DICE BLOCK NUMBER and allows you to skip red orbs (see B tier for explenation). FOR TWO TURNS. Needless to say, it's busted. The only thing it can't do is allow you to use other green orbs, which can suck for some boards (like Pyramid Park). But still, holy heck. So TL;DR, Boo and Dry Bones solo gg.
In Mario Party 2, if whomp makes the last 5 turns prediction and Mario is playing, he will always choose Mario to win, and Mario will always get the prediction reward.
Dang, I was hoping this would actually analyse the dice more in detail. Because if your die, for example only has the number 1, that die may not get you far, but it will realiably move you 1 space forward, so if you need to land exactly on the next space, that die would be very useful, but any other situation means that die kinda sucks.
Yeah, what you're describing would require a slightly more complex simulation of stuff like gaining coins, buying stars, and an AI piloting the dice to avoid spaces with penalties. It wouldn't be impossible, I've written something similar to calculate the best Monopoly spaces
I wouldn’t consider coins at all this game’s economy is terrible and one of the big advantages a dice can have in this game is the ability to land on ally spaces. Landing on an ally space is more important than getting stars in the early game
Great video, but I do have one small note: landing on a space is generally a net positive, so while their expected die values may be the same, a die with 10 1's will be better than a die with 9 0's and one 10. Spaces can do anything from kick you forward to get you coins or push others backwards so it'd definitely complicate the equation:/
Boo's dice outperform percentage seems like a statistical error. In theory it should be identical to Wario's Wario's dice is 0-0-6-6-6-6 Boo's dice is 0-0-5-5-7-7 They literall subtracted 1 to two 6s and added 1 to two 6s. The average value is exactly the same
No. If there wasnt an end point then they would be the same but the way he conducted the experiment this wasnt the case. There was an end point to the games He wanted to see who would move the futherest. And the dice rolls are random but wario has more consistancy if you get 3 6s than 18 moves but if you get 2 5s and a 7 thats 17. Wario just cuts outs the chances to move less which is important for a game that has a turn limit. I might of explained this badly but i hope you understand what im trying to say
@@hamchurger4566 Yeah, but then Boo can get two 7s and one 5 instead, which would be 19 My point is that the probability and average are the same. It's basically a normal distribution
@@ddnava96 yeah he can but with a limited turn time your less likely to get 7. So with boo you get 2/6 chance to get a 7. Which is 33% to get a 7 then you divide that by 10 for a 10 turn game for 3.3%. So that is the chances of rolling a 7 every single turn. The odds of getting a 5 is exactly the same as 7. 4/6 chance to get less than 6 but wario has a 4/6 chance to get a 6. The payoff of getting a 6 is better then risking getting a 7 as it is double. The averages is not same as probablity they have a factor sure. But it shouldnt be the reason why you think they should be statistically identical.
@ Don't trust me. Study some probability and calculate the probability curve yourself. You'll easily notice what I mean What was done in the video was just rolling the dice, not calculating the actual probability. With enough bad luck each ine of those die will result in a total of 0 in an entire match. The probability of moving more than the average of the default dice is about the same for both, but testing tham empirically will result in some error precisely due to probability
13:44 One thing you forgot to account for is that when you roll a 0 or coin value on your die, you don't have a chance to grab any coins or events (which are normally net positive). As you mentioned, blue spaces are plentiful, so rolling a 0 actually has an expected value of negative coins (and all coin values are worth slightly less).
I know you ranked hammer bro at the very bottom of the list but you forgot one very important factor: in the king bob-omb map you have a 50% chance to get a partner in your first move (you need a 5). The partner is so much effective, it easily erases the weaknesses of his dice. Unfortunately, this is the only map, which has this gigantic advantage. But this makes hammer bro for me one of the best character-dices in the game
You didn't take into account team games. How well two blocks sync together plays a big role there, especially since some characters can only role even/odd numbers, and stars require you to land exactly on it for team games.
mario party superstar is like the mario party game where coins don't really matter. i have never seen someone be unable to afford a star after t5 and people almost always had more than 40 coins at the end of the game
I do think one thing that’s missing is the fact that while raw movement is super helpful, landing on new spaces is also extremely beneficial. Every time you roll a 0 you’re missing out on coins, lucky spaces, happenings, etc. That being said Hammer Bro should have had 7s instead of 5s they did him dirty.
Do your simulations account for the actual spaces of the boards? Consistency has a particular value if there are spaces that certain characters' dice block let you more easily hit. For instance, Megafruit Paradise has its event spaces that let you travel between the two sides of the map. It doesn't matter how much your movement is if you're stuck on the opposite side of the board from the star. Similarly, in an actual game against people, if you're a couple of spaces from the star, it's better to have a die that has a higher chance of rolling the required number of spaces from the star than one that has higher average movement because if you miss, it's possible that another player will snatch the star first. Finally, there's the human factor. The law of large numbers only applies when the sample size is large enough. How many individual players are going to play that many matches of Super Mario Party? It's entirely possible for someone using high-variance die to get burned every time they play the game. Ultimately, it's Mario Party. People shouldn't get too sweaty about it.
The problem with consistency of landing on a specific space is that those odds are reduced to 50/50 once you get your first ally, since they'll roll a 1 or 2 in addition to your die. Allies are usually too good to pass up in most other circumstances in the game, meaning consistency in landing on a spot is less important than the consistency or rolling at least as high as a certain value. That said, there's an Ally space exactly 6 spaces from the start of Whomp's Domino Ruins, giving Wario perfect consistency in reaching that space, since he'll always move either 0 or 6 spaces on his turn. Wario is already a top 3 character alongside Bowser (the most overpowered character in the game) and Boo (who is just a Wario variant), and he's even better on that board, as well as the circumstance you described on Watermelon Walkabout.
@@FlamezOfGamez Allies are important, yes, but I have gone games before being able to get one. Even if it is easier on some maps than it is on others. Ironically, it is easier to get an ally, on maps where it is not as easy as your specified map/character combination, with a dice roll that can be relied on consistently to get you on spaces you want to land on...
The simulations of 10, 15, and 20 turn games will all tend towards the expected value for the dice blocks as you do more simulations. All you need is to compute the expectation The simulations do not give you any more info than that. As for the consistency idea you mention in your comment, what you really need to do is just talk about variance/standard deviation.
Admittedly this is nitpicking, but rather than saying expected value applies to “infinite number of turns”, really it’s just a sufficiently large number of turns, which generally is just 30 or more. There’s also the fact that we’re not only considering 1 game at a time, but that this expected value runs across differently games. eg if you play ten 20 turn games, that’s 200 turns right there.
Something to note about Super Mario Party,: the die rolls don't seem to be random (at least not for board movement with the character dice). I was able to fairly reliably hit the high numbers on Bowser's die, just by hitting the die at the correct timing. I wasn't perfect at it, but Bowser becomes even more broken when you almost always hit the high numbers. Sure, this is just anecdotal, but I played a lot of this game and got the timing down well enough that I can confidently say there was skill involved in the die roll (which really sucks for a Mario Party game btw).
I always played as Rosalina, and to be honest, I always found not only the passive coins from the dice, but even more importantly, having the option to not move at all for a turn if I got lucky was super helpful. Not to mention that, especially with the addition of mushrooms and double dice rounding out the movements anyway if you pay a visit to the shop, I almost never found myself going any slower than I really needed. In fact, if I would ever use bowser or dk, with their higher variance in their dice, it was not reliable enough to rely on. Plus, even if Rosalina's die doesn't go further than the normal one on average, if I was concerned about going too slow I could just use the normal die, then switch to Rosalina's when I wanted to have a chance of not moving, which can be very very valuable to have access to. On the other hand, if I were to user Bowser,, it's true that I could use the normal die if I wanted to not have to rely on not getting unlucky, but the only real benefit to using his custom die is moving farther, and on a high roll he only moves 2 spaces farther than Rosalina's best anyway, smaller than even a simple mushroom item would add.
In SMP, you'd be surprised how much impact the odds of losing coins has. Furthermore, there is a lot of utility to having characters that move a reliable number of spaces, even if it's not a high one. I'd call this factor "predictability". And include it with a low weight. (Maybe 10%). Also, the coin weight will be different depending on game length, because gaining or losing coins is much more impactful before there have been two minigames (1 star's worth), then rapidly trail off.
In my opinion, most of the ones valued below the standard die then regain value by consistency. You already know you have the ability to roll up to a 6, but if 6 is a bowser space then a die just replacing 1 instead of the 6 is better, despite greatly lowering the average roll. In a game of chance, being able to switch to a sure win when it arises is much more valuable than sticking to chance the entire time, even if that change is marginally higher than the previous chance option that you can always choose to do with any character. Like you said, it doesn't matter if you get to a star broke, if you can guarantee reaching a blue space next turn, thats far more valuable than a +3 coins that keeps you on a red space and gives you net nothing at all.
Here’s an idea for making dice more fair based on movement: Since the values on a normal die add to 21, if each character will have their own custom dice in a future mario party game, all of the faces of their die should add to exactly 21. This way, all the special character dice and the normal die will have the same expected values. We’re also gonna make it so every die has no coin faces for the sake of fairness. To prevent people from moving too far in a single turn, no single face of a die should be more than 10 (which is arbitrary, and I feel is fair), and dice shouldn’t have negative faces, fractional, irrational, or imaginary values to keep things from getting too crazy. I also think it’d be extra fun to let players opt to craft their own die under these conditions.
In addition to the 'consistency' oversight, I think there are plenty of situational scenarios where you'd rather have one of the 'low tier' dice. So I think its fine and maybe even preferable that most of the dice are worse than the regular option. But that doesnt mean you'll go the whole game.botnusing the special die. There are so many situations that need to be read to determine what the best choice is. If I'm 3 spots away from the star, I'm not gonna use Bowser's die. I need to use the normal die to secure that star. This is far from a rare scenario.
It seems like you could have just taken the average distance between stars in spaces, and average coin value for landing on a space and pitted that against the gain or loss from character dice to see what percentage of the time you’d be unable to purchase a star and used that to factor in how important coins are. Just a thought
These statistics were great but lacked the one key factor that makes certain dice so good, consistency. Daisy and Shy Guy come to mind due to how great their dice are for making middle movement, and control where you wanna land, lots of event spaces if i recall are 2 spaces next to eachother, if you are 3/4 spaces away, guess who can hit it 100% of the time? Daisy. She might not move far or make bank, but her dice has the one thing mario party isnt known for much, strategy.
I played a game w/ my friends where all four of us could only use our special dice. I picked DK b/c I didn’t think it would be that bad. For 13 turns straight, I did not move. I didn’t get a 10 every other turn of the game, I just got zeros for 13 turns in a row. So that’s not ideal
While the math is nice, i think this underestimates the strategical advantage of being able to either avoid certain rolls or making certain rolls possible. For example the Dry Bones Die has little advantage purely from a mathematical standpoint, but being able to count on rolling either a 1 or a 6 can be very useful if you have to avoid a bowser field, for example. It's not as simple as it sounds at first, but when combined with other items, it can be used very effectively
Now count on average how many coins you get per board (counting blue spaces, red spaces, average on lucky spaces, average price in stores,etc), use that average to count how many laps you complete in a path where you get the most stars, and assume you dont use skeletal keys. Then, for every lap, if the character has 20 coins, he gets a star and looses 20 coins, if he has enough to pay the boo, do so to get 1 star instead of buying (cause stealing is better than buying), and if he has for both at the end of the lap, do both. Perhaps some new results will come out. Also, dont take into account boo coin steal, cause you fight 3 opponents, and theres a 1/3 of a chance they steal the coins you stole them, so yeah, i wouldnt include it in my calculations.
Let's see if you accounted for space advantage and total distance traveled. Some characters have died that allow them to stall which can be very useful.
This isn't the full story. When you play in Super Mario Party you can also land on spaces that give you a friend. Your friend gives you access to their dice, so you can use their special dice, or you can use your dice and they will give you a flat 1 or 2 bonus to your roll. Surely if you factor in dice combos and bonuses the list would change. It would be another good video
Because you can't roll 2 dice together, I don't think it would actually change much. Having a buddy is always better for getting the little bonus roll, and getting one with a better die is also better. There's not really any combos or anything you could do, as cool as that would be...
A partner in Super Mario Party is a sunk benefit for coins and number of spaces traveled benefits. It affects every character you select at the beginning by the same amount because none of the benefits, changes based on who you selected but rather only based on who you are randomly given as a partner. Because who you receive as a partner is independent of who you chose and the custom dice blocks do not add (like how TheChiptide replied), it is a sunk benefit.
the flat 1 or 2 just makes it easier to ignore the consistency dice (daisy and shy guy notably being c tier in the movement dice lol) and makes high movement dice like bowser even more valuable
Sadly dice combos are random. What does matter is the distribution of ally spaces on the board. For example, Whomp's Domino Ruins has an ally space 6, 10, and 12 spaces away from the start, meaning a character like Peach will thrive. But Peach struggles on King Bob-Omb's Powderkeg Mine, where the ally space is on space 5.
I'm surprised he never mentioned reliability or consistency; I think that is the most applicable thing that people really look for when choosing a dice. He said himself that the standard die is already one of the best die, so I would assume that it would b best to use that die most of the time and also have another really consistent die like shy guy or daisy when you need a certain roll. I think his conclusion of Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong actually goes very well with this, though, because their dies only have 2 options on them, and Diddy has a straight 50-50. If you need to go exactly 7 spaces to land on a certain space, then Diddy would give you exactly 50-50 odds to do it. I also think that 7 spaces is a pretty considerable distance, and depending on the mode, could give you more options. For example, the Bob-bomb map in Super Mario Party is not a standard straightforward map like most of them, but has a grid formation in which it is always better to roll high, and it is important to have either even or odd roles. Diddy gives pretty high odd roles, as does boo and Luigi, so I would expect them to be pretty high, with Diddy on top because he's exactly 50-50. He also never mentioned allies, which give you their dice when you get them, and I would be interested to hear what combination of dices would be the best.
Think of it as you like but its just a simulation. It doesnt account for weighting a dice side ingame. The engine could just give a % to every side of a dice to show up and offset any advantages entirely.
Super Mario Party is the BEST version of Mario Party The ONLY downside is a lack of board options and I mean... another 20 minigames wouldn't have hurt. But seriously, the formula Super Mario Party added made it a LOT more fun, because EVEN if you had shit luck, you could make up for it by at least picking a character that will just roll reasonably low, but consistently. Besides, the concept of having custom dice, adds MORE character to the game, not less.
On Kamek's Tantalizing Tower, you can play up to 30 turns. How do they stack up there? Does Luigi climb even higher on the list? Does Diddy fall farther?
Have you considered simply computing the expected value of 10 dice rolls? E[X + Y] = E[X] + E[Y], so it is simply multiplying the expected value by number of turns.
the biggest problem with the character dices is that they didnt use a formula to balance them. just compare yoshi with waluigi if you dont believe me: they both roll the exact same except for the 0 face where with waluigi you will also lose 3 coins while with yoshi you dont and simply just wont move.
Ok, so it turns out there is one (debatably) important factor that I didn’t consider: consistency. While a character like Bowser may move a lot, it varies WILDLY from turn to turn. This means that in a situation where you’re close to the star and only need to move a little bit, Bowser isn’t actually that helpful. While someone like Daisy, who only has 3 and 4 on her dice, can’t move very far, she can guarantee you at least 3 spaces, which can sometimes be very helpful. Since the standard die is already pretty good on its own, you could make the argument that having an extra tool like this in your bag for select situations is more beneficial than a really good but somewhat unreliable die that you can use every single turn. I’d need a more sophisticated simulation to see how often situations like this actually come up and wether or not it’s a good trade off, but who knows, maybe I’ll come back to this in the future!
Hehe you're kind of right to factor in things like consistency, but also you want to factor in "Options" as well. I think the consistency people are on a right track, but over committing to how important 3s and 4s are compared to high and low numbers in Mario Party. One major part of Mario Party is being able to have options on what you can do, like in any other Mario Party (including 9 and it's infamous 0-1 block), those items are options. You may use a Poison mushroom on yourself to force yourself to roll a low number so you stall a bit before Bowser or avoid a trap set by a player, or stall for a star space knowing next turn the star may spawn in front of you or before a junction. Otherwise you use mushroom/golden mushroom if you want to roll big to move around the board and increase the odds of a star snipe. Characters like Luigi can use his block to simulate either rolling high and low or use the regular to roll average. Shyguy and Daisy may be consistent, but they ONLY roll average and unless the board has every 3 or 4 spaces with solid spaces, people can calculate exactly how many turns it'd take a Daisy or shyguy to reach the star. the math doesn't look good for them as Bowser getting a 10 in 2 turns means Shyguy needs 5 turns using his dice to catch up. so that gives Bowser up to 3 chances to roll the 10 needed to catch up to or pass Shy guy (it's worse with Daisy, who needs 4 turns just to reach him in one). and strategically, for every turn Bowser or DK roll a 0, you know exactly what's going to happen to you, so you either zoom way past them, or you get the effect you want. AND if you want average...just roll the regular dice. Daisy and Shyguy don't get the option to "just roll a regular dice" cause they can ONLY roll a regular dice. so even with the consistency, that consistency comes with just increasing the odds that they move the average everyone else already moves, but that's all they get. Other characters can get something no one else can and plan accordingly. (or in cases like Mario and Yoshi.... they both have 7s on thier dice block so that 1/6 chance is still 2 turns worth of a guaranteed Daisy or Shy guy roll to catch up, but if Daisy or Shyguy need the 7 spaces...or anything above 5.... just gotta roll the regular die like everyone else. they won't be catching the star faster than anyone else, even with DK's 4 0s....he still out paces their 6 turns of movement in 2 turns...
Shy Guy is an amazing character, and ended up in C every single time. Unfortunate.
@@MarioMastar You do realize we are making the same argument for items, right? That argument works for everyone, regardless of character.
And no one is saying daisy or shyguy rolls their die every turn. You know that, right? Since you responded to me before, right after I even said that, so... Nice strawman there. At every point, we have said the character die is good for getting you where you need to be on the board, and the default die has ALREADY been touted as a decent die, so it can be used in every other case...
It's seems like what I said before... Like you read numbers, but haven't actually played the game, because, once again, you ignore the map itself and its spaces, and tunnel vision on raw numbers and the star.
Though this time you DID mention traps, and the need to avoid them, so good for you, but like I said before, with a consistent die, you will better be able to land on item spaces that will give you mushrooms, either ones that will give you the speed to get past traps or ones to slow you down before a trap, or whatever other reason you need the mushrooms for.
I mean
Dommey kong i think has the same die as bowser but there are +3 coins
ok, but, here me out. With bowser, in an event you need to be consistent, just use the regular dice. There's hardly a downside if you're smart
Super Mario Party isn't the only Mario Party game where your character choice has an actual effect on gameplay (though it is by far the most pronounced one). Mario Party 7 has Character Orbs, of which each character can only have one of; for example, Mario and Luigi get the Fireball Orb whereas Toad and Toadette get the Triple Mushroom Orb. Super Mario Party Jamboree also has the strange quirk that any Jamboree Buddy that spawns cannot be a character that is already being played, and every Jamboree Buddy has a unique effect, so there's theoretically strategy in character selection there as well.
Huh, I thought they would be able to, since the single player mode does have kamek make a copy of whoever you’re playing, is that exclusive to single player?
@@DavidAnderson-cw7oq You absolutely can play the Showdown Minigames with their respective characters; the version of the character running the minigame will become a desaturated clone. But on the board, this doesn't happen, and they just won't show up
The Buddy is a resource equally accessible to any player, though. So while you may pick a certain character specifically because you don't want them to show up as the Buddy during the game, that will affect you just as equally as all other players. So it's not really a strategic choice, just a passive gameplay influence.
@@FlamezOfGamezThere could be strategy with picking a character if you're bad at their minigame, though.
In Mario party 2 and 3, Whomp will occasionally appear as the one who predicts a winner, and will always give 10 coins to Mario, even if he is in first place. So playing Mario gives a slight advantage, unless you are playing on Bowser land, where Whomp doesn’t appear.
I have no idea why Whomp is such a Mario Fanboy.
Also, certain cpu characters will prioritize certain items.
Even though Shy Guy is mostly in C tier, he is probably one of the best characters in the game. If you want a 4, choose his dice, otherwise roll standard. His best trait is consistency, which unfortunately wasn't accounted for in this video.
Edit: How does this have more likes than the pinned creator's comment when my comment came out a couple hours earlier? How?
5:30
“sometimes you might wanna roll low. but those cases are pretty rare”
everyone knowing that opponents will do everything to screw you over:
Consistency is also complicated in this game by partners who will roll an extra dice with you. I switch from consistency to efficiency when I get a partner.
3 and 4 aren't valuable enough to give consistency points as you either generally want to move many spaces, or not at all. All characters roll an average of 3 or 4 by using the default blocks. but what other characters have that Shy guy and Daisy don't is they have a higher chance of rolling high or low numbers than those two, who have a LOWER chance than average of rolling those numbers. So if you need to stall for the next star space, or you're trying to snipe a Star with a high roll. those two have only the base die and hope they roll high, the same thing everyone else would do. thier die doesn't help them while it MAY help other characters. Hehe you mention people aren't accounting for consistency, but "Options" are another factor that isn't being accounted for. "Does my character provide unique opportunities to control my outcome that no other character can do?" For most characters the answer is yes, be it rolling a 0 to stay on thier space (stalling for star spaces), or rolling a 6 or higher to move many more spaces than others, OR having a hgiher chance of rolling a 5 or 6, or a higher chance of rolling a 0 or 1. Those are moments where you can strategically control your position. You can't do so with a 3 or 4 as there's very few situations where "I want to move the average spaces I would've with a dice roll". It's a very particular moment where you're exactly 4 spaces away or 3 spaces away from something, and while it's possible your opponents may roll just 1s or 2s all game and you can keep up with the 4s to get way ahead, people will know exactly how many turns it'll take to reach the star and just have to outroll you ONCE to get there first. (especailly in Bowers and DK's case where thier rolls make them go more than twice as far, even 3x as far, that's 3 turns Shyguy needs to catch up with 1 good 10 from Bowser and DK) and the worst part, there's NOTHING Shy can can do to take advantage of those odds. can't roll low to stall, can't roll higher than 5 or 6 like the normal die. SO.... what are you going to do? If rolling nothing but 4 every game lead to a guaranteed win, then there you have it. but even just TWO 10s is 5 turns to catch up (or 6 for Daisy). that's not an advantage. Heck even Luigi getting a 7 is 2 Daisy turns and getting a 5 or 6, Luigi has a nearly 50/50 chance of rolling higher than average, so if he needs to move, he can. if he need to stall, he can. if he just wants to roll average, he can. Daisy and Shyguy...can ONLY move average.
@@MarioMastar Only moving average doesn't affect consistency. Consistency is being able to most the time have the same outcome, which Shy Guy succeeds in. My point wasn't "Consistency matters more than movement." My point was "If this expirement were to happen again, try to fit in consistency." Shy Guy is one of the best characters, and that's because His dice can be used safely in most situations. You compared consistency to movement, instead of consistency to consistency. Comparing consistency to consistency would be saying Bowser is better than Koopa because he gets high numbers 50% of the time instead of 16.6%. Sure, Shy Guy can't move fast, but you aren't picking Shy Guy if you want to move fast. You're choosing Shy Guy to land on that Ally Space or VS space or event space. To come to that outcome you need luck (or items), which you also need to move far. Also, you mentioned Daisy being similiar, which isn't true because Daisy has significantly less consistency. In you're argument, fair to see the two as similiar. In mine, a lot less so.
12:12 Stars cost 10 coins in Super Mario Party so this is the cost of two stars that you are effectively loosing.
Yea, but you also win 10 coins in a minigame, so if you play well it’s very unlikely that you can't afford it.
Or _just_ two out of the twenty minigames LMAO
That's literally nothing. Also the game throws money your way at every opportunity.
I feel like this approach massively overlooked the fact that in practice, Super Mario Party, coins are quite abundant, and gaining and losing coins from character dice blocks is a nearly irrelevant game factor. Weighing the coin option at 30% feels to me like about 30% too much.
Additionally, Stars cost only 10 coins in Super Mario Party. Because Stars are so cheap, your access to Stars is the main limiting factor in how many of them you can get, rather than your ability to afford them. Having too few coins to afford a Star means that you probably bought so many Stars that you're in a safe position for victory already.
This video also ignores the fact that certain dice blocks are good at outperforming the normal dice block in certain circumstances. For example, Daisy is put at the second lowest position by your tier list, but her dice block is the only one in the game with a minimum value higher than 1, boosting up all the way to 3, even. If all you need on your dice block is a 3 or greater to reach the Star (after accounting for any items or allies), then Daisy's die is what you would pick, every time, given the choice. Shy Guy is similarly valuable in his 5/6 chance of giving you a 4. If a 4+ is what you need, then I don't care if my other die face is 0, because any roll less than that is equally bad, I don't get to the Star.
Other characters' dice are useful in the way that they differ from the normal dice block. For 6 characters (Luigi, Waluigi, Yoshi, Rosalina, Koopa Troopa, and Bowser Jr.), their main strength lies in their 1/6 chance of being able to roll a 7+ die face. While it's true that if you need a 7+, you'd choose their die over the standard die, that 1/6 of it working pales in comparison to the likes of Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Bowser, and Boo giving you better odds of a 7+ roll. A tier list should take into account the fact that these four characters outclass a lot of the other characters. Wario and Dry Bones join them if you're looking for increased odds of a 6+, while Lugi, Waluigi, and Hammer Bro join in with helping with 5+, but admittedly being outclassed by basically everyone I mentioned before.
The ability to roll low is a sometimes desirable trait. Your tier list ranks Monty Mole above Goomba, even though both dice would never ever be picked for their expected ability to outperform the average dice roll of the normal die, and would instead be picked based on their ability to roll a 0. Goomba outperforms Monty Mole in this way.
The strength of every character's dice block is their increased odds of doing something the normal dice block can't do, or is outright impossible for it to do, while this video mistakenly assumes every dice block is trying to be useful in the same two circumstances, one of which is largely irrelevant.
This video did not address Partner Party (which is understandable, it's not the standard mode), but I'd thought I'd address how characters' dice change in that mode. In that mode, you sum both character's dice, and then move on a grid, needing to land exactly on the Star space in order to buy it. In that mode, a charcter's bias toward rolling an even or odd number becomes the most important factor. Two characters with solely even faces, like Peach and Shy Guy, can guarantee that you'll move even, rather than the 50/50 chance of rolling even if either character uses a dice block that's equally distributed between even and odd. This is also why none of the characters in the game have an all-odd dice block. It would be too powerful to be able to guarantee an odd roll (using one all-even die and one all-odd die), since it would mean that you could always land on a space within 2 rolls. (If you need to move an even number of spaces, and roll odd off of the 50/50, then next turn you'll need to roll odd to reach your target space). This radically changes the tier list, and you were correct to not present it in the same video as the normal tier list.
Yeah gets into a lot of "Theory vs practice". It's easy to get into the numbers and assumptions, but in practice (like actual practice), the ultimate thing about Mario Party is the factors you CAN control that determine the outcome of each board. E.g. a lot of people say Daisy is better because she's consistent, but her consistency gives her "less options" than other characters because on average, she's rolling the same average as everyone else with normal dice and can't roll higher or lower. Situationally this makes her very consistent, but it's comparable to items that make or break the luck factor in every other Mario Party. If you need to go far, use a mushroom, if you need to stall, use a poison shroom on yourself. otherwise, just roll the die. Very rarely are you moving a median number like 4-5-6 deliberately (unless you're using the super mini mushroom but you do really want to roll a 10 with it so you can make the mini-minigames.) but even then, 4-5-6 out of10 are solid spaces to move each turn in regular Mario Party. if the limit is 1-6 though, moving 3 turns is normally fine, but the problem is many characters have options to move 5 or more as an option and they quickly outpace Daisy and Shyguy as a result (2 10s will take 5 or 6 turns to catch up to the same space). and as you only need really to pass the Star space, that's why there's greater weight in rolling high. (like you said, you can easily get tons of coins, just do well in minigames). So while Daisy and Shy guy may be consistent, the situations where they would need to move that average with advantage assumes everyone else is moving slower, rolling low numbers all the time and that's very unlikely. similarly if they NEED to roll low, they just gotta hope they do, as they have a lower chance of rolling low or high than everyone else, giving them less "options". It's kind of like everyone gets mushrooms and Poison shrooms except Daisy and Shyguy, who only get like a block that can roll a 5. That's nice if you're exactly 5 spaces away from the star, but.... a mushroom can get you up to 15 spaces further. and a poison shroom will let you stall for a turn guaranteed. Now 5 is a decent number, but 3 though.... it takes 3 turns for Daisy to catch up to ONE 10 roll from Bowser or DK. so if you need to move fast (which you usually do to get the star) Daisy and Shyguy are the ONLY characters who have a 0% chance of sniping a star (well really a 1/6 as they have to roll a regular die and 5 or 6 to move further than average). Arguably Rosalina has a similar issue with her 0, 1,2,3,4, 8 but the 0,1,2 part means you can use her to have a higher chance of rolling a low number. think of it as a poison shroom. so if you want to stall or don't mind stalling, but might get that big 8, you can use her. You have to be 3 spaces away from a star or want to move exactly 3 or 4 spaces to make use of Daisy and Shy guys dice. HOWEVER..... with partners.... Daisy and Shyguy suddenly become the BEST characters as now that consistency matters cause you're actively spending something to get more rolls. so getting a 6 and a 0 on DK is not really helpful at all since the point of 0s is to stay still, not flub your roll increase. that guaranteed 3 and 4 will guarantee the movement you need. and if you can guarantee a roll with 2 dice or 3, THEN Daisy and Shyguy's consistency pays off in spades. but as a single die...it's useless.
I think the odd-even analysis in Partner Party is kinda useless.
Getting an ally adds either 1 or 2 to your roll, which immediately makes the all-even/all-odd die lose its advantages.
You COULD try not to get any ally at all to salvage its advantage. But the fact that allies help you move further is too much of an advantage to pass by.
This comment said almost everything I wanted to say, and saved me the effort of typing it all out myself. Thank u so much, I honestly wish this comment was the top comment as it summarizes nearly everything that this video overlooked. Tho I did wanna add one thing:
U mentioned how consistency is often a good thing, and ur right, but polarizing rolls can also be useful. Although the cases are generally rare, sometimes characters have something right in front of them that they want to avoid, either by going over it or staying behind it. Like maybe there’s a bowser space 3 or 4 spots in front of them, or possibly there’s multiple negative spots in the range they would normally expect to get from a roll. In this case, the character would want a dice block that moves either very far or not far at all, kinda like Bowser’s, DK’s, or Dry Bones’. It’s still “consistency” in a sense, but instead of consistent median rolls, it’s consistent non-median rolls. There are probably several other situations similar to this that involve other character’s dice, I’m not gonna get super deep into it but u get the idea, it’s really hard to make such a general analysis of dice blocks when many important decisions in each game are anything but general, and randomly Rosalina’s weird block is 10x better than Bowser’s or Daisy’s.
You are missing the hole point though, Bowser’s dice gives u a better chance to roll higher. Maybe in a single circomstance you prefer having the certanty of rolling at least a certain number, buy overall you will perform better with Bowser. What you said is like saying that you prefer playing poker with the certainty of having a pair than having a better chance (than the other players) to have a poker
@ I feel like highly overestimating how important it is that bowser has the highest average roll (and by extension underestimating the different strengths of the other characters’ dice).
Daisy's Dice is usually considered the best (especially since you also always have the normal die to choose from)... not because of overall movement, but because of consistency. 3,3,3,3,4,4. All basically the average roll of the normal die. You won't be making big moves (with it alone) but you will be moving consistently.
I like shy guy's as well. It's consistent
I thought the more consistent characters like Daisy might do better as we increased the turn count, but based on the simulation Daisy is actually kinda trash. Someone like Boswer may only move 50%, of the time, but when he does he moves over twice as far as Daisy does, so in the end it’s still better. Based on my data, Daisy’s actually the 2nd worst!
@@TheChiptide Like I said, Daisy is not good because of ability to move a lot, but because of consistency.
Like, say you have the coins, and are 3 spaces away from the next star. What would you want to roll, given any of the three choices: Bowsers dice, the default dice, or daisy's dice? Bowser's dice is only 50% able to get you there, and even 33% to lose you the coins to get it. The default dice is only 50% to get you there. But Daisy's dice is 100% to get you there.
In a game of RNG, that consistency is key, especially as you said, the default dice is already pretty good, so as Daisy you just roll the default dice, but when you NEED the consistency, NEED a 3 or a 4, you roll Daisy's dice...
Looking at an article I saw with a quick google search... this is a stat all dice have, and it's called *variance* , and Daisy's dice has the lowest variance.
Because what you don't see with just a simulation is what each roll each turn, where that places you on each map each turn. In Mario Party, that matters, and that all depends on the roll of the dice.
@@TheChiptide Like I said, Daisy is not good because of ability to move a lot, but because of consistency.
Like, say you have the coins, and are 3 spaces away from the next star. What would you want to roll, given any of the three choices: Bowsers dice, the default dice, or daisy's dice? Bowser's dice is only 50% able to get you there, and even 33% to lose you the coins to get it. The default dice is only 50% to get you there. But Daisy's dice is 100% to get you there.
In a game of RNG, that consistency is key, especially as you said, the default dice is already pretty good, so as Daisy you just roll the default dice, but when you NEED the consistency, NEED a 3 or a 4, you roll Daisy's dice...
Looking at an article I saw with a quick google search... this is a stat all dice have, and it's called *variance* , and Daisy's dice has the lowest variance.
Because what you don't see with just a simulation is what each roll each turn, where that places you on each map each turn. In Mario Party, that matters, and that all depends on the roll of the dice.
Why does my reply keep getting deleted, or not showing up, or whatever?
The regular die performing so well has other implications. Because another important thing to consider is precision. There will be many times when you want to land on a specific spot and some character benefit a tone from having a regular die plus a more consistent one. As such, they can move with an A tier efficiency while having the option in the bag to increase their chance of landing on that one spot they need.
With the addition of partners giving you an extra 1 or 2 move. It randomizes the odd or even chance anyways. So more moves is actually always better if you have even 1 partner
@@tommyle3243 I think as a partner, Daisy and Shyguy would be top tier. I keep wall of texting why Daisy and Shy guy aren't good despite consistency due to the lack of options on thier part, but guaranteeing adding a 3 or 4 to their roll if they can double roll would bump them up a lot of tiers because if you're double rolling, you're going for high numbers and that actually starts to make them far more useful. a double roll with DK would be a complete waste if you get a 0 or LUigi's 1, I didn't think of that in my text, but you're the first person to mention partners, so the others didn't either.
@@MarioMastar They're an integral part of the game. We didn't think we had to. Just like with items, and map states and spaces you want to be on or want to avoid. Just because you didn't think of any of this doesn't mean no one else did... You just now thinking of them shouldn't do anything but make you realize how silly you were being by "keep wall of texting"
Also, what do you mean by "double roll". That sounds like the mechanic of the new game, Super Mario Party Jamboree, but in Super Mario Party, allies just add a 0-2 to your roll (and also give you the option to roll their die instead of the default die or your character's die).
So, really having Daisy as an ally does nothing that being Daisy and having an ally wouldn't do... so I once again have to wonder if you've ever actually played the game...
Mario Party isn't a singleplayer game of snakes and ladders with no dice choice. Situational dice are not supposed to be used every turn but in the right situation. If a die is good depends on how far a star is away, how far other players are from it, if you are in the lead or losing, if there is a specific tile you want to hit and more. This approach is way too simple to get any useful information
I'd say all that's missing is "die consistency" i.e. the variance the special die have. Being able to hit (or avoid) spaces almost for certain is arguably more important than just travelling the fastest.
@@KGafterdark Consistency and variance are two different things, a dice only rolling 1 or 6 is fairly consistent for hitting specific numbers but has a higher variance than a D6. High consistency is good for hitting specific spaces, having a choice between high and low variance is good for playing safe/risky depending on if you're ahead or behind.
However, I do agree that the consistency is the most important factor missed and applied to the actual rules of the game would get pretty close to the real answer. He does try to factor it in in his newest video but in a simplified version of the game that's barely recognizable. It gets closer but is still very far off the actual game
There’s something I wanted to add in regards to the consistency argument that I haven’t seen said yet.
Let say you’re playing as shy guy with his 5/6 chance of getting a 4 and 1/6 of getting a 0. If there’s a space you want to land on 4 tiles away, you can have a very high chance of landing on it and it can be tried again next turn.
You also have to factor in the golden pipes that you can get from good luck spaces that take you directly to the star. With character like shy guy, you can roll the regular dice block and if there’s ever something of interest 4 spaces away, you roll the shy guy block. I think this makes him significantly better than he would appear from you method.
I've only played Mario Party 2 times in my life, both times I chose Bowser because he's my main in smash Ultimate, and won both times. I now know it wasn't just dumb luck.
Hammer Broniacs in shambles right now💀
Oooh nooo.
Nah they're fine, Hammer Bro is top 5 😉
I like the different dice and I DEFINITELY love that they don’t always use it. Changing the formula is what keeps Mario Party fresh and keeps us buying it
So theres actually 2 that I really wanna bring up. Daisy & shy guy!!!
While they don't travel the most distance they have insane utility in that the shy guy can force a 4 space movement if you're ever 4 spaces away from a spot you want to land on... This has come in handy every single game I've used him no less than once, but often more with special spaces like friend tiles.
Daisy has a similar use with a 2/3 chance at 3 & 1/3 chance at four. There's still a statistical chance of failure for either roll unlike the shy guy, but it does give you massively increased odds of landing on a tile of either of these distances double for 4 & quadruple for 3.
While moving far is important in Mario party, where you land is often more important. Which is why these two are actually two of the best for many of the maps
Joining the shy guy supremacists here. The consistency of almost always knowing exactly what space I’ll land on turns Mario party into a strategy game, not a luck game
Tbh Hammer Bro might be the only character whose dice is objectively worse than someone else's. Dry Bones has 111666, which is basically hammer bro but with higher rolls.
But wouldn't it be more effective to see which die is best *in tandem* with the standard die?
In theory, yes, but that's probably too complex a decision matrix. The Daisy die, for example, is only better when "3 or more" or "exactly 4" is your target. Barring the ability to look at the board each turn, EV is everything.
I think the thing about 0 move rolls is that, for example, going from movement of 1 to a movement of 0 is not the same as going from 2-1, since going to a new space usually does something (eg. give or take coins), and you wont get that effect if you stay still.
Because of this fact, you might want to have your character move AN amount more or less often. This depends on the map, and the ratio of good or bad things happening on new spaces which would determine how preferable/non-preferable moving is, but i think that this is a third factor that is important to weigh. (among all of the other things brought up in the comments). Something like a third metric to take into account is the percent chance of movement (%rolls >0).
Love the video! glad I found this channel, its cool to see that you did your due diligence to this problem.
How incredibly fitting. The only character that can stand to Bowser is his Mario Party polar opposite and his Mini Me
Haven't watched the full video yet, but it seems to me that two things are important along with mere speed. Consistency and the ability to stand still. Consistency is Hammer bro's ability to 100% go less than 6, 50% go EXACLY 5, and 50% get less than two. (not to mention he can stand still, but not consistently) Having this consistency on hand ALONG SIDE the A-tier regular die undoubtably has great power.
Under these conditions dice can be seen as having interesting utility, and Donky Kong and pDiddy cong are both very powerful with great consistency and the ability not to move.
Idc what any statics say, I like Goomba, and he’s great to play because he’s Goomba, no one can change my mind. This was very interesting though, and I’m glad I found this, thank you
5:30 I want to point out that, in a real game rolling low is almost never _really_ a use case for the character dice anyway. since as the game goes on you'll inevitably get ally characters added to your team, each one adding 1d2 to each of your rolls, so strategically choosing to roll the player dice quickly becomes impossible.
goomba's my favorite! Normal die with the 1 & 2 being 0 instead (with bonus coins) is very useful, especially if you don't have an ally and 1 of the next 2 spaces suck
Honestly I want them to bring character dice blocks back but make them a setting you turn on or off like how in Jamboree you can change settings before starting the game like where minigames are random or votes, bonus stars are on or off, etc.
I would love to hear a more in depth mathematical explanation as to why more turns can change an average performance. My intuition tells me that with enough 10 turn games, a die would have the same average roll as opposed to 20 turn games
I supose, that change in placement is actualy just a сalculation error, chances are just geting closer to first metod mentioned in video, also, fact that computers are not truly random may also cause some anomalies in calculations
@@6n-thorus945 Computers _are_ truly random in every meaningful way - aside from modern pseudorandom generators being very good, they sample from a source of true or functionally-indistinguishable-from-true randomness. (The exact temperature reported by some internal sensor, the exact time since the computer was turned on by human choice+unpredictable clock drift, optical quantum fluctuations in a tiny beam of light, electrical quantum fluctuations, etc.)
It all lies in what is referred to as the rule or law of large numbers. The more times a random event happens, the more likely it is to be closer to the actual average. I saw this happen in real life as I was watching some people play Magic: the Gathering, it was a 3 player game, and a move was made that made them have to pass out 300 objects to the 3 players at random and I, as a mathematician, told them to just give each player 100, but they insisted on rolling a die, and when it was all over, they all had 100 plus or minus 2. At the beginning it looked like one player was getting ahead, but then it all evened out, and they wasted like 10 min rolling a die 300 times.
Anyways, all of this to say that a 10 turn game is likely to have more variation than a 20 turn game, which will make the average of a character like Bowser worse as he will only move 2/3 turns on average, but with a small number of turns, it is more likely that it will be lower than that.
In Mario Party 7 for Nintendo GameCube it also matters a lot which character you choose because all characters have their own character-specific items, so-called Character Orbs. For example Mario and Luigi have the Fireball Orb to steal coins from others while Toad and Toadette have the Triple Shroom Orb to double their Dice Blocks for 3 turns.
What's actually interesting is that even though statistics may not always factor into real games, just give a likely average, one of the things about DK that makes him a definitive top tier over Bowser in shorter games is the fact that those +5 coins and 0s kind of indicate that if you don't need to move that particular turn, and want to try your luck at getting coins, you can reliably do so. A 0 just repeats the space you're currently standing on, so DK has an option to farm the blue space or a lucrative happening space he's on to give himself a bonus if it's unlikely he's going to reach a star in time and knows the other star space may be nearer to his current position. He can otherwise choose to just use the normal die like you said. MOST characters would prefer the normal Die over their custom one. There is the strategic factor for the dice rolls and what they may mean on a turn to turn basis over normal dies, but the characters who have the options. Though that said, what makes Bowser, Boo and the other character with higher than average rolls so strong is the extremity of thier rolls still allows them to accomplish the same thing DK can situationally but... with a slightly higher odds of actually moving if you want to move. I'd almost argue Diddy could be a contender for the best character because those 3 7s and 3 0s (with one being a +2 coins) makes his dice the safest for when you WANT to use it. as if you're content with your space but also may want to move far, you have a 50/50 chance of either happening and can plan accordingly (and the guaranteed 7s means you know EXACTLY what spaces you'll land on, so you can guarantee you land 7 spaces away or repeat until you do...shame this game doesn't have MP8's lucky spaces. XD)
But yeah, even factoring in strategy and board design and such, I think the tier list may still be the same. I'd personally have put Luigi a bit higher because of his "either low or high" similar to Diddy, so there's a reason to use his dice over the standard based on your situation, but most characters do seem like they don't have a reason to ever use thier die for the 1/6 chance something good happens. If it's not 50/50 or BIG pay out like DK and his 2 10s which makes up for his 4 zeros (and 4 zeroes is good. high chance to repeat the space you're on), it's just not worth it over a regular dice. you can't predict where you'll land as they're all too arbitrary.
Just as consistency is an important value when weighing the dice, utility is also surprisingly useful. DKs dice was a favourite of mine because of its reliability to not move and potentially farm coins and spaces, which can amount to bonus stars.
Honestly, the quality of your content warrants more subscribers than you currently have. Great video!
Can't wait for part 2 of this video, I would love to see a truly optimized version of it!
I feel targeted by the hammer bro comment. For reasons that I'm not really sure of, I play hammer bro! Now I never use his die, but still.
3:26 Actually, for whatever reason, on the Kamek's Tantalizing Tower/Tantalizing Tower Toys map (the one with a lot of gold that changes star prices) you can have a 30-turn game. It's only on that one though, which is kinda disappointing.
IMO the best way to test if any character has an advantage would be to set up a gauntlet of all-CPU games in an emulator and then try to measure the win rate of different characters
As soon as started talking about how do we combine these 2 results, I immediately amd excitedly said out loud "oh is the desciscion matrix back!?". And I don't know how to feel about that lol.
Issue is daisy is good because of consistency, for example, not simply high rolls.
Things heating up in the d6 fandom
Hammer bro is my favorite character… I know he’s annoying and stuff in actual Mario games, but he has one of my favorite enemy designs, just behind para-beetle. Yes, I’m a fan of mediocre enemy designs
The first time I played this game I played as hammer bro...
Commenting before I watch the video: Boo has undisputedly the best dice.
Fun fact: Super Mario Party wasn't the first Mario Party game to have a tier list. Mario Party 7 had diffrent items per character. Here's the tier list just to know.
F tier- Vaccum Orb (Wario and Waluigi). Unless you get it for free via orb space, it's very bad. You either have a 50/50 to gain or lose coins (if you buy it as anything other than 1st) or a 25% to gain coins, 25% chance to break even and a 50% to lose coins (if you buy it at 1st).
D tier- Fireball Orb (Mario and Luigi). You lose your ability to use ALL green orbs (the movement items like mushrooms and other defensive/helpful items), for an ability to steal 10 coins if you pass someone, which you might just miss anyway.
C tier- Egg Orb (Yoshi and Birdo). Can be used to steal placed orbs (basecally atacking item you have to either land/pass through to lose coins than can be placed). It can be really good, but also depends on chance. It can also steal your own orbs.
B tier- Flower Orb (Peach and Daisy). Allows you to get 3 coins for every space you pass and skips red orbs (orbs you pass through and lose coins/hinder you and is placed by other players). Red orbs are really good on most boards, and down right expected on some (like Pagoda Peak). Plus, who doesn't love free money? The only down side is you might roll low.
A tier- Triple Shroom Orb (Toad and Toadette). A mushroom (the equivelent of a double dice in this game) for three turn in a row. The only disadvantages are: 1. You can't pass red orbs (See B tier for explenation), which sucks for some boards (lile Pagoda Peak), and 2. You can't use green orbs (see D tier for explenation). But still, 2 dice blocks for 3 turns sounds like a steal!
S tier- Magic Orb (Boo and Dry Bones). Whoo boy, you might ask "how can this be better than 3 double dice blocks?". Well, allow me to explain. This one orb DOUBLES YOU DICE BLOCK NUMBER and allows you to skip red orbs (see B tier for explenation). FOR TWO TURNS. Needless to say, it's busted. The only thing it can't do is allow you to use other green orbs, which can suck for some boards (like Pyramid Park). But still, holy heck.
So TL;DR, Boo and Dry Bones solo gg.
I knew hammer bro was bad but I WONT STAND THIS SLANDER MY BOY IS PRECIOUS
In Mario Party 2, if whomp makes the last 5 turns prediction and Mario is playing, he will always choose Mario to win, and Mario will always get the prediction reward.
Dang, I was hoping this would actually analyse the dice more in detail. Because if your die, for example only has the number 1, that die may not get you far, but it will realiably move you 1 space forward, so if you need to land exactly on the next space, that die would be very useful, but any other situation means that die kinda sucks.
Yeah, what you're describing would require a slightly more complex simulation of stuff like gaining coins, buying stars, and an AI piloting the dice to avoid spaces with penalties. It wouldn't be impossible, I've written something similar to calculate the best Monopoly spaces
I wouldn’t consider coins at all this game’s economy is terrible and one of the big advantages a dice can have in this game is the ability to land on ally spaces. Landing on an ally space is more important than getting stars in the early game
Knowing you will move either 5 or 0 spaces is increadibly powerfull. Hammer Bro is s tear.
Great video, but I do have one small note: landing on a space is generally a net positive, so while their expected die values may be the same, a die with 10 1's will be better than a die with 9 0's and one 10. Spaces can do anything from kick you forward to get you coins or push others backwards so it'd definitely complicate the equation:/
Boo's dice outperform percentage seems like a statistical error. In theory it should be identical to Wario's
Wario's dice is 0-0-6-6-6-6
Boo's dice is 0-0-5-5-7-7
They literall subtracted 1 to two 6s and added 1 to two 6s. The average value is exactly the same
Also, judging by the average, Rosalina's dice (2.83) is worde than Goomba's (3) and Hammer Bro's (3)
No. If there wasnt an end point then they would be the same but the way he conducted the experiment this wasnt the case. There was an end point to the games
He wanted to see who would move the futherest. And the dice rolls are random but wario has more consistancy if you get 3 6s than 18 moves but if you get 2 5s and a 7 thats 17.
Wario just cuts outs the chances to move less which is important for a game that has a turn limit.
I might of explained this badly but i hope you understand what im trying to say
@@hamchurger4566 Yeah, but then Boo can get two 7s and one 5 instead, which would be 19
My point is that the probability and average are the same. It's basically a normal distribution
@@ddnava96 yeah he can but with a limited turn time your less likely to get 7.
So with boo you get 2/6 chance to get a 7. Which is 33% to get a 7 then you divide that by 10 for a 10 turn game for 3.3%. So that is the chances of rolling a 7 every single turn. The odds of getting a 5 is exactly the same as 7.
4/6 chance to get less than 6 but wario has a 4/6 chance to get a 6. The payoff of getting a 6 is better then risking getting a 7 as it is double.
The averages is not same as probablity they have a factor sure. But it shouldnt be the reason why you think they should be statistically identical.
@ Don't trust me. Study some probability and calculate the probability curve yourself. You'll easily notice what I mean
What was done in the video was just rolling the dice, not calculating the actual probability. With enough bad luck each ine of those die will result in a total of 0 in an entire match. The probability of moving more than the average of the default dice is about the same for both, but testing tham empirically will result in some error precisely due to probability
I like Daisy for the consistent, predictable progress, and DK, for the 0 movement on a good space, or hauling ass to somewhere most likely important.
Good luck calculating the best character in 100% Orange Juice
reminds me of old game theory, in that there's actually math being done and the jokes are delightfully corny. good content
13:44 One thing you forgot to account for is that when you roll a 0 or coin value on your die, you don't have a chance to grab any coins or events (which are normally net positive). As you mentioned, blue spaces are plentiful, so rolling a 0 actually has an expected value of negative coins (and all coin values are worth slightly less).
I know you ranked hammer bro at the very bottom of the list but you forgot one very important factor: in the king bob-omb map you have a 50% chance to get a partner in your first move (you need a 5). The partner is so much effective, it easily erases the weaknesses of his dice. Unfortunately, this is the only map, which has this gigantic advantage. But this makes hammer bro for me one of the best character-dices in the game
You didn't take into account team games. How well two blocks sync together plays a big role there, especially since some characters can only role even/odd numbers, and stars require you to land exactly on it for team games.
"In most mario partys, the character you pick has no influence on the game."
Except DK's giant hit box
mario party superstar is like the mario party game where coins don't really matter. i have never seen someone be unable to afford a star after t5 and people almost always had more than 40 coins at the end of the game
Large Mario party Jamboree Characters have bigger collision boxes and hurtboxes, meaning there’s probably still S-tier characters in Mario Party
I do think one thing that’s missing is the fact that while raw movement is super helpful, landing on new spaces is also extremely beneficial. Every time you roll a 0 you’re missing out on coins, lucky spaces, happenings, etc.
That being said Hammer Bro should have had 7s instead of 5s they did him dirty.
Do your simulations account for the actual spaces of the boards? Consistency has a particular value if there are spaces that certain characters' dice block let you more easily hit. For instance, Megafruit Paradise has its event spaces that let you travel between the two sides of the map. It doesn't matter how much your movement is if you're stuck on the opposite side of the board from the star.
Similarly, in an actual game against people, if you're a couple of spaces from the star, it's better to have a die that has a higher chance of rolling the required number of spaces from the star than one that has higher average movement because if you miss, it's possible that another player will snatch the star first.
Finally, there's the human factor. The law of large numbers only applies when the sample size is large enough. How many individual players are going to play that many matches of Super Mario Party? It's entirely possible for someone using high-variance die to get burned every time they play the game.
Ultimately, it's Mario Party. People shouldn't get too sweaty about it.
People absolutely get sweaty, and salty, over Super Mario Party... Just not in this way. But yeah, everything you said is correct.
The problem with consistency of landing on a specific space is that those odds are reduced to 50/50 once you get your first ally, since they'll roll a 1 or 2 in addition to your die. Allies are usually too good to pass up in most other circumstances in the game, meaning consistency in landing on a spot is less important than the consistency or rolling at least as high as a certain value.
That said, there's an Ally space exactly 6 spaces from the start of Whomp's Domino Ruins, giving Wario perfect consistency in reaching that space, since he'll always move either 0 or 6 spaces on his turn. Wario is already a top 3 character alongside Bowser (the most overpowered character in the game) and Boo (who is just a Wario variant), and he's even better on that board, as well as the circumstance you described on Watermelon Walkabout.
@@FlamezOfGamez Allies are important, yes, but I have gone games before being able to get one. Even if it is easier on some maps than it is on others.
Ironically, it is easier to get an ally, on maps where it is not as easy as your specified map/character combination, with a dice roll that can be relied on consistently to get you on spaces you want to land on...
The simulations of 10, 15, and 20 turn games will all tend towards the expected value for the dice blocks as you do more simulations. All you need is to compute the expectation The simulations do not give you any more info than that. As for the consistency idea you mention in your comment, what you really need to do is just talk about variance/standard deviation.
Admittedly this is nitpicking, but rather than saying expected value applies to “infinite number of turns”, really it’s just a sufficiently large number of turns, which generally is just 30 or more. There’s also the fact that we’re not only considering 1 game at a time, but that this expected value runs across differently games. eg if you play ten 20 turn games, that’s 200 turns right there.
10:04 Hah! I understood that reference.
Something to note about Super Mario Party,: the die rolls don't seem to be random (at least not for board movement with the character dice). I was able to fairly reliably hit the high numbers on Bowser's die, just by hitting the die at the correct timing. I wasn't perfect at it, but Bowser becomes even more broken when you almost always hit the high numbers. Sure, this is just anecdotal, but I played a lot of this game and got the timing down well enough that I can confidently say there was skill involved in the die roll (which really sucks for a Mario Party game btw).
I always played as Rosalina, and to be honest, I always found not only the passive coins from the dice, but even more importantly, having the option to not move at all for a turn if I got lucky was super helpful. Not to mention that, especially with the addition of mushrooms and double dice rounding out the movements anyway if you pay a visit to the shop, I almost never found myself going any slower than I really needed. In fact, if I would ever use bowser or dk, with their higher variance in their dice, it was not reliable enough to rely on. Plus, even if Rosalina's die doesn't go further than the normal one on average, if I was concerned about going too slow I could just use the normal die, then switch to Rosalina's when I wanted to have a chance of not moving, which can be very very valuable to have access to. On the other hand, if I were to user Bowser,, it's true that I could use the normal die if I wanted to not have to rely on not getting unlucky, but the only real benefit to using his custom die is moving farther, and on a high roll he only moves 2 spaces farther than Rosalina's best anyway, smaller than even a simple mushroom item would add.
In SMP, you'd be surprised how much impact the odds of losing coins has. Furthermore, there is a lot of utility to having characters that move a reliable number of spaces, even if it's not a high one. I'd call this factor "predictability". And include it with a low weight. (Maybe 10%). Also, the coin weight will be different depending on game length, because gaining or losing coins is much more impactful before there have been two minigames (1 star's worth), then rapidly trail off.
In my opinion, most of the ones valued below the standard die then regain value by consistency. You already know you have the ability to roll up to a 6, but if 6 is a bowser space then a die just replacing 1 instead of the 6 is better, despite greatly lowering the average roll. In a game of chance, being able to switch to a sure win when it arises is much more valuable than sticking to chance the entire time, even if that change is marginally higher than the previous chance option that you can always choose to do with any character.
Like you said, it doesn't matter if you get to a star broke, if you can guarantee reaching a blue space next turn, thats far more valuable than a +3 coins that keeps you on a red space and gives you net nothing at all.
5:48 I feel so insanely called out, I need a moment
Here’s an idea for making dice more fair based on movement:
Since the values on a normal die add to 21, if each character will have their own custom dice in a future mario party game, all of the faces of their die should add to exactly 21. This way, all the special character dice and the normal die will have the same expected values. We’re also gonna make it so every die has no coin faces for the sake of fairness. To prevent people from moving too far in a single turn, no single face of a die should be more than 10 (which is arbitrary, and I feel is fair), and dice shouldn’t have negative faces, fractional, irrational, or imaginary values to keep things from getting too crazy. I also think it’d be extra fun to let players opt to craft their own die under these conditions.
I just found this channel, 2 minutes in and I already love it
In addition to the 'consistency' oversight, I think there are plenty of situational scenarios where you'd rather have one of the 'low tier' dice.
So I think its fine and maybe even preferable that most of the dice are worse than the regular option. But that doesnt mean you'll go the whole game.botnusing the special die. There are so many situations that need to be read to determine what the best choice is.
If I'm 3 spots away from the star, I'm not gonna use Bowser's die. I need to use the normal die to secure that star. This is far from a rare scenario.
My friend once played as Donkey Kong and didn’t move the entire game
Donkey Kong is even better, because you will always use the standard die, when the star is 1 to 4 spaces in front of you.
It seems like you could have just taken the average distance between stars in spaces, and average coin value for landing on a space and pitted that against the gain or loss from character dice to see what percentage of the time you’d be unable to purchase a star and used that to factor in how important coins are. Just a thought
These statistics were great but lacked the one key factor that makes certain dice so good, consistency. Daisy and Shy Guy come to mind due to how great their dice are for making middle movement, and control where you wanna land, lots of event spaces if i recall are 2 spaces next to eachother, if you are 3/4 spaces away, guess who can hit it 100% of the time? Daisy. She might not move far or make bank, but her dice has the one thing mario party isnt known for much, strategy.
I played a game w/ my friends where all four of us could only use our special dice. I picked DK b/c I didn’t think it would be that bad.
For 13 turns straight, I did not move. I didn’t get a 10 every other turn of the game, I just got zeros for 13 turns in a row.
So that’s not ideal
You'd think each die would at least have their sides sum up the same...
My default assumption was yoshi as he has one of the most balanced consistent dice
While the math is nice, i think this underestimates the strategical advantage of being able to either avoid certain rolls or making certain rolls possible. For example the Dry Bones Die has little advantage purely from a mathematical standpoint, but being able to count on rolling either a 1 or a 6 can be very useful if you have to avoid a bowser field, for example. It's not as simple as it sounds at first, but when combined with other items, it can be used very effectively
Did u voice fix it Felix?
I'm more of a Monty Mole main, but even I have to admit that Bowser's dice block is quite the meta breaker.
I would recommend that you use convolution of the distribution to get the exact distribution of total dice rolls after n rolls.
Now count on average how many coins you get per board (counting blue spaces, red spaces, average on lucky spaces, average price in stores,etc), use that average to count how many laps you complete in a path where you get the most stars, and assume you dont use skeletal keys. Then, for every lap, if the character has 20 coins, he gets a star and looses 20 coins, if he has enough to pay the boo, do so to get 1 star instead of buying (cause stealing is better than buying), and if he has for both at the end of the lap, do both. Perhaps some new results will come out. Also, dont take into account boo coin steal, cause you fight 3 opponents, and theres a 1/3 of a chance they steal the coins you stole them, so yeah, i wouldnt include it in my calculations.
Let's see if you accounted for space advantage and total distance traveled. Some characters have died that allow them to stall which can be very useful.
But in mario party you dont always want to make a high roll, sometimes you just want to increase your chances of landing on specific spaces
This isn't the full story. When you play in Super Mario Party you can also land on spaces that give you a friend. Your friend gives you access to their dice, so you can use their special dice, or you can use your dice and they will give you a flat 1 or 2 bonus to your roll.
Surely if you factor in dice combos and bonuses the list would change. It would be another good video
Because you can't roll 2 dice together, I don't think it would actually change much. Having a buddy is always better for getting the little bonus roll, and getting one with a better die is also better. There's not really any combos or anything you could do, as cool as that would be...
A partner in Super Mario Party is a sunk benefit for coins and number of spaces traveled benefits.
It affects every character you select at the beginning by the same amount because none of the benefits, changes based on who you selected but rather only based on who you are randomly given as a partner.
Because who you receive as a partner is independent of who you chose and the custom dice blocks do not add (like how TheChiptide replied), it is a sunk benefit.
the flat 1 or 2 just makes it easier to ignore the consistency dice (daisy and shy guy notably being c tier in the movement dice lol) and makes high movement dice like bowser even more valuable
@@ado- That is true. However, it doesn't affect the space and coin analysis. I'll revise the comment.
Sadly dice combos are random. What does matter is the distribution of ally spaces on the board. For example, Whomp's Domino Ruins has an ally space 6, 10, and 12 spaces away from the start, meaning a character like Peach will thrive. But Peach struggles on King Bob-Omb's Powderkeg Mine, where the ally space is on space 5.
This is very funny considering back when superstars came out, I was a bowser main and my best friend was a hammer bro main hahahahaha
I can see you becoming the next game theory keep it up!
I'm surprised he never mentioned reliability or consistency; I think that is the most applicable thing that people really look for when choosing a dice. He said himself that the standard die is already one of the best die, so I would assume that it would b best to use that die most of the time and also have another really consistent die like shy guy or daisy when you need a certain roll. I think his conclusion of Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong actually goes very well with this, though, because their dies only have 2 options on them, and Diddy has a straight 50-50. If you need to go exactly 7 spaces to land on a certain space, then Diddy would give you exactly 50-50 odds to do it. I also think that 7 spaces is a pretty considerable distance, and depending on the mode, could give you more options. For example, the Bob-bomb map in Super Mario Party is not a standard straightforward map like most of them, but has a grid formation in which it is always better to roll high, and it is important to have either even or odd roles. Diddy gives pretty high odd roles, as does boo and Luigi, so I would expect them to be pretty high, with Diddy on top because he's exactly 50-50. He also never mentioned allies, which give you their dice when you get them, and I would be interested to hear what combination of dices would be the best.
Think of it as you like but its just a simulation. It doesnt account for weighting a dice side ingame. The engine could just give a % to every side of a dice to show up and offset any advantages entirely.
I had no idea there was an ARG here! That's so cool!!!
The statistically best die is the one your (former) friend has
12:13
Actually due to the deflation of star prices and just about everything else in super mario party, that’s approximately 2 stars you miss out on
Now stars only cost 10(unless it can be changed in-game)
Super Mario Party is the BEST version of Mario Party
The ONLY downside is a lack of board options and I mean... another 20 minigames wouldn't have hurt.
But seriously, the formula Super Mario Party added made it a LOT more fun, because EVEN if you had shit luck, you could make up for it by at least picking a character that will just roll reasonably low, but consistently.
Besides, the concept of having custom dice, adds MORE character to the game, not less.
On Kamek's Tantalizing Tower, you can play up to 30 turns. How do they stack up there? Does Luigi climb even higher on the list? Does Diddy fall farther?
I think that bowser jr. Has the worst die in the game just because every other die is just better at other specific things
Have you considered simply computing the expected value of 10 dice rolls? E[X + Y] = E[X] + E[Y], so it is simply multiplying the expected value by number of turns.
I thought this was gonna be about how size effects minigames in the new Mario Party
finally someone talks about super mario party
Glad to see my number one DK sitting at the top
It is NOT at all rare to be just a few spaces away from the Star and not have enough coins to buy it lmao
the biggest problem with the character dices is that they didnt use a formula to balance them. just compare yoshi with waluigi if you dont believe me: they both roll the exact same except for the 0 face where with waluigi you will also lose 3 coins while with yoshi you dont and simply just wont move.