Let's say you drink from the fountain… and die. The immediate player reaction may be "Jeez, I shouldn't have drank from that fountain."

But... nope, you had still made the right decision! There's no way you could have killed the final boss with only 1 health. Fate/luck didn't go your way this time, but if you found yourself in that situation a second time, it’d still be correct to make that decision again if your goal was to actually slay the boss instead of just making it to the boss room.



Joinrbs frequently explains this concept in Slay the Spire, when he takes what look like "risky" plays such as fighting difficult Elite enemies early on. As he explains it: while fighting hard enemies now increases damage taken in the next fight (therefore looking riskier), it's actually way better odds for beating the game than taking the 'safe' path.



To oversimplify it, you can think about paths A and B.

Path A: 60% chance of surviving this fight, then a 60% chance of beating the game.

Path B: 90% chance of surviving this fight, then a 20% chance of beating the game.

New players, due to lack of experience, can’t exactly predict what the second percentage chance will be for winning, so they naturally gravitate towards the strategy of dealing with the most immediate threats only. To improve, though, you’ll eventually have to shift towards being okay with taking short-term risks.

Q: What does this have to do with the idea of thinking about odds instead of results?

A: It’s easy to self-reflect on a good decision that went wrong, and erroneously think you had made the wrong choice. Usually when this happens, it’s because you had taken an earlier risk that technically had a better overall chance of meeting your goal, but it didn’t pan out this time.

The focus of your self-improvement should be making good decisions under present variables rather than making decisions that would have worked for last time’s variables. The latter informs the former, but they’re not the same.