Perfect Randomness:Grinding:Skill ratio

[flashflash account]

wow look at all these tryhards

I also don't see why you selected these three in particular

they all have to do with affecting the overall difficulty of the game in a way I guess
randomness depending on how prevalent it is can make difficulty flip flop constantly (RNG in RPGs with enemy AI, damage amounts, other lame mechanics) but it also has a lot of potential for fun. Hard to implement properly, rewarding if done so

Grinding and skill, at least in RPGs, help to balance each other out. Personally I think games with grinding available should be beatable without grinding at all. A good example of this is EarthBound, where you don't really need to grind anything to be able to progress since your party tends to stay just strong enough (and then you can instantly defeat an enemy if your Guts is high enough or something which afaik has never been done outside of earthbound and it really should). Too much grinding is boring and can lead to players dropping your game, too much difficulty leads to the same. I also personally tend to like easy games that don't present too much of a "wall of challenge", if that makes sense. There are certain points where I simply can't progress because something is too hard, best example being Mettaton EX in undertale

so I just stopped playing cause it was a crappy game

grinding still obviously has a purpose in helping players overcome difficulty and allowing them to experience the entire game, but inflating enemy strength to force a player to grind and pad time (as was done oh so often in the days of yore) is crap

so overall you want a little bit of each, too much is overpowering