The key to making a challenging game is to reward failure.

Quizzical

That surely sounds counterintuitive, so it needs a lot of explanation.  I'll add the caveat that it must only reward failures that were good-faith attempts with a meaningful chance of success, not just starting something and going AFK.

People sometimes talk about challenge in terms of death penalty, and cite early MMORPGs that had harsh death penalties.  If every death means that you lose 5 hours of progress, and you play content with a difficulty such that you only die once per five hours, you're just treading water and not making progress.  You'll quickly learn to seek out easier content.  If you're playing content easy enough that you only die once per 50 hours, that's not challenging.  So harsh death penalties are actually antithetical to challenging games.

So why reward failure?  Let's suppose that you have choices of higher level content or lower level content.  You get 50% more rewards for beating the higher level content, but nothing if you fail.  However, you have only a 50% chance of success if you attempt the higher level content, but a 98% chance of success for the lower level content.  Which content should you do?  Some quick arithmetic reveals that you'd expect to get 31% better rewards from doing the lower level content where victory is nearly assured.

But even that assumes that they take the same amount of time, which they surely won't.  Higher level mobs will take longer to kill, and will likely require players to spend longer recovering between battles.  So if you go after the higher level content, you expect it to take longer to get those reduced rewards.

This can sometimes get so absurd that, instead of doing easy content that you'll beat 100% of the time, it's sometimes better to do easier content that you'll also beat 100% of the time, and only gives 2/3 as large of rewards, but you can do it in 1/2 of the time.  And people wonder why so many games seem so easy.

The solution is to scale the rewards such that the most rewarding path involves doing content where victory is far from assured.  I'm not saying that everything needs to be only a 50% chance of success, but I am saying that if doing content where you have a 99% chance of success gives markedly better rewards per unit time than content where you have only a 98% chance of success, your game is not going to be challenging.

This nearly requires offering substantial rewards for failure.  Obviously, succeeding at content should be more rewarding than failing at the same content.  And players ought not be encouraged to try things far above their level with no real hope of success.  So even in failure, how close you came to success should matter tremendously to the loot you get.

But if a close failure where you had a 50% chance of success gives about the same rewards per unit time as an easier victory where you had a 99% chance of success, and succeeding at the harder content gives considerably better rewards yet, then we're on the right track.  You can rescale things such that the optimal rewards involve players attempting things where they'll succeed 70% of the time or 80% or 90% or whatever, but keep it out of the high 90s if you want any semblance of challenge.

This, of course, ignores the problem of scaling challenge to group content, in which some group members are much stronger than others.  But that's another topic for another time, and this post is long enough.

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I posted this before the recent forum downtime.  The transition seems to have eaten everything that happened for about two hours before the forums were locked, so that thread is apparently gone.  As such, I'm posting it again.  Feel free to repeat your comments made on the previous thread.  Including the guy who came in to argue that even Care Bears think that anyone who disagrees with him should die and then got banned, and then had his ban eaten by the forum rollback.

Quizzical

Xodic said:

Rewarding failure... I'm afraid I would never agree with this. 

The only reward you should get for failing is a big damn stick, carrot not included.

Then how do you prevent games with progression from feeling ridiculously easy where you're strongly encouraged to only try things you're nearly guaranteed to win?  For example, PvE in most MMORPGs.

Ridelynn

I think I fall more into Xodic's camp - you shouldn't necessarily reward failure. But you are right, more difficult content should be more rewarding than trivial content.

There could be tiers of success - meeting the bare minimum nets you a baseline reward, meeting some additional objectives gives you +3 reward, additional objectives + handicaps +5, etc.

But yeah, you shouldn't necessarily outright reward failure. I think there needs to be some baseline measure of "success" that people need to strive for. Even if that's just whatever threshold you determine to be "trying with legitimate effort" and not necessarily beating the final boss/killing xxx/whatever.

Robsolf

I think that most modern developers understand this.  They just know that many gamers don't.  As evidenced previously.

But at least they've... almost but not quite gotten past the idea that you have to punish failure, as though failure isn't enough?  No more losing 5 hours of progress for a failure for most games.

But hey... if a game wants to do that still, and they think there's a market for it, let er' rip... I'll be the first person to not sign up.

Octagon7711

Hasn't failure been rewarded simply by lowering the difficulty level, in most games.  People complain about content being too difficult, so the approach has been to simply gimp content.  It's fast and easy, why would they spend time coming up with multiple reward systems?

Asch126

Developers reward failure so much that games like Fire Emblem have a Phoenix Mode now where your characters just come back.

Scorchien

UO already has a system much like this in place ,  The more difficult the mob the higher reward for Karma/Fame and Loot tables ...

Asch126

Scorchien said:

UO already has a system much like this in place ,  The more difficult the mob the higher reward for Karma/Fame and Loot tables ...

That's rewarding difficulty, not rewarding failure.

Octagon7711

I'm seeing a lot of games that let you revive without penalty by using cash shop items.  Or you can revive at another location and pay for repairs.  

Robsolf

Octagon7711 said:

Hasn't failure been rewarded simply by lowering the difficulty level, in most games.  People complain about content being too difficult, so the approach has been to simply gimp content.  It's fast and easy, why would they spend time coming up with multiple reward systems?

I'm not aware of one, currently.  Does Star Trek Online still do that?  Leaving your PVE enemy at their "beatdown" state?  I remember that from the past.  Every other game I've played kicks me to a respawn point and resets the encounter.

Scorchien

UO already has a system in place like this , the harder the mob is you kill the Higher lvl of Karma /Fame and Loot table is rewarded

Eldurian

So I have always wanted to see insanely challenging content that would have like a 99%+ failure rate. Stuff that's kind of like "Wooooah! You did X?! That is SO cool!" The race wouldn't be to be "the first person to complete X". It would be to be one of the people who completes X ever.

In a scenario like that I wouldn't say rewarding failure is a good idea so much as rewarding partial success is.

The primary reason to do that content should be a unique reward you can only get from completing that content though. At that point even if the reward is just a cosmetic or title anyone who has any achiever in them at all is going to want to do it, just to be able to say that they did.

Octagon7711

Robsolf said:

Octagon7711 said:

Hasn't failure been rewarded simply by lowering the difficulty level, in most games.  People complain about content being too difficult, so the approach has been to simply gimp content.  It's fast and easy, why would they spend time coming up with multiple reward systems?

I'm not aware of one, currently.  Does Star Trek Online still do that?  Leaving your PVE enemy at their "beatdown" state?  I remember that from the past.  Every other game I've played kicks me to a respawn point and resets the encounter.

STO has that difficulty slider which gives better rewards for more difficult content and encourages group play.

Scorchien

Asch126 said:

Scorchien said:

UO already has a system much like this in place ,  The more difficult the mob the higher reward for Karma/Fame and Loot tables ...

That's rewarding difficulty, not rewarding failure.

there should be no rewards for failure , Just a product of the soccer generation and there participation trophies ...

Eldurian

Here is an example to put what I am talking about into perspective.

There is an insanely challenging 5 man dungeon. This dungeon contains some randomized challenges so that you never really fully know what you are up against. What remains constant is there are 20 challenges each progressively harder than the last with progressively good loot as each challenge is completed.

After each challenge there is a checkpoint. You can store loot at each checkpoint. 

The true challenge making it to level 20 and getting a title or cosmetic that only people who make it to level 20 achieve. This is designed to be something only the most accomplished parties with the best teamwork could ever hope to achieve.

There are no respawns in this dungeon. If you wipe the dungeon is over. However you do get all the loot from the checkpoints you completed.

So you aren't "rewarding failure" but you are rewarding for partial success.

ZionBane

Quizzical said:

That surely sounds counterintuitive, so it needs a lot of explanation.  I'll add the caveat that it must only reward failures that were good-faith attempts with a meaningful chance of success, not just starting something and going AFK.

People sometimes talk about challenge in terms of death penalty, and cite early MMORPGs that had harsh death penalties.  If every death means that you lose 5 hours of progress, and you play content with a difficulty such that you only die once per five hours, you're just treading water and not making progress.  You'll quickly learn to seek out easier content.  If you're playing content easy enough that you only die once per 50 hours, that's not challenging.  So harsh death penalties are actually antithetical to challenging games.

So why reward failure?  Let's suppose that you have choices of higher level content or lower level content.  You get 50% more rewards for beating the higher level content, but nothing if you fail.  However, you have only a 50% chance of success if you attempt the higher level content, but a 98% chance of success for the lower level content.  Which content should you do?  Some quick arithmetic reveals that you'd expect to get 31% better rewards from doing the lower level content where victory is nearly assured.

But even that assumes that they take the same amount of time, which they surely won't.  Higher level mobs will take longer to kill, and will likely require players to spend longer recovering between battles.  So if you go after the higher level content, you expect it to take longer to get those reduced rewards.

This can sometimes get so absurd that, instead of doing easy content that you'll beat 100% of the time, it's sometimes better to do easier content that you'll also beat 100% of the time, and only gives 2/3 as large of rewards, but you can do it in 1/2 of the time.  And people wonder why so many games seem so easy.

The solution is to scale the rewards such that the most rewarding path involves doing content where victory is far from assured.  I'm not saying that everything needs to be only a 50% chance of success, but I am saying that if doing content where you have a 99% chance of success gives markedly better rewards per unit time than content where you have only a 98% chance of success, your game is not going to be challenging.

This nearly requires offering substantial rewards for failure.  Obviously, succeeding at content should be more rewarding than failing at the same content.  And players ought not be encouraged to try things far above their level with no real hope of success.  So even in failure, how close you came to success should matter tremendously to the loot you get.

But if a close failure where you had a 50% chance of success gives about the same rewards per unit time as an easier victory where you had a 99% chance of success, and succeeding at the harder content gives considerably better rewards yet, then we're on the right track.  You can rescale things such that the optimal rewards involve players attempting things where they'll succeed 70% of the time or 80% or 90% or whatever, but keep it out of the high 90s if you want any semblance of challenge.

This, of course, ignores the problem of scaling challenge to group content, in which some group members are much stronger than others.  But that's another topic for another time, and this post is long enough.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I posted this before the recent forum downtime.  The transition seems to have eaten everything that happened for about two hours before the forums were locked, so that thread is apparently gone.  As such, I'm posting it again.  Feel free to repeat your comments made on the previous thread.  Including the guy who came in to argue that even Care Bears think that anyone who disagrees with him should die and then got banned, and then had his ban eaten by the forum rollback.

I think the main point to consider, is "what is challenge?"

Challenge can be facing a opponent with a 50/50 chance to win/lose, Challenge can also be a Jump Puzzle, Challenge can also be finding 100 coins from all over the game world.

Now some people may call that last one a 'grind" but grinds in their own way are a challenge, one of perseverance.

There are all kinds of ways to make things challenging, so when you talk of challenge, you need to address what kind of challenge you are talking about.

Then you have to ask "Who is this challenge for", when people talk of Challenge, often what they really want, is something that is easy enough for them to, but too hard for those they feel are below them.

The harsh truth is that when people discuss challenge, they seem to forget that No one really wants to get stonewalled by a game.

iixviiiix

The key to making a challenging game is reward , but failure isn't an option

Eldurian

ZionBane said:

I think the main point to consider, is "what is challenge?"

Challenge can be facing a opponent with a 50/50 chance to win/lose, Challenge can also be a Jump Puzzle, Challenge can also be finding 100 coins from all over the game world.

Now some people may call that last one a 'grind" but grinds in their own way are a challenge, one of perseverance.

There are all kinds of ways to make things challenging, so when you talk of challenge, you need to address what kind of challenge you are talking about.

Then you have to ask "Who is this challenge for", when people talk of Challenge, often what they really want, is something that is easy enough for them to, but too hard for those they feel are below them.

The harsh truth is that when people discuss challenge, they seem to forget that No one really wants to get stonewalled by a game.

Does anybody else remember the days when there were things in games that you weren't expected to be able to beat without serious perseverance? That one level of that one game on that one difficulty mode was something you couldn't just breeze past or expect to beat without first getting really good at the game and then giving it your all and probably having some good luck in the process?

I remember that. And it wouldn't ruin the game for me if sometimes I needed to back down from that challenge and go do other things to hone my skills before attempting it again.

I mean, some non-MMO games still have things like that.I think the reason you don't see that in MMOs is in these words:

"Now some people may call that last one a 'grind" but grinds in their own way are a challenge, one of perseverance."

I would dispute that a grind is a meaningful challenge but grinds seem to be the only challenge in MMOs. Do this simple task enough times and out pops your reward!

I think the idea that there are things in the game you simply cannot complete unless you are the top 1% or less of players in the game would be utterly rejected by the majority themepark community.

I think the kind of people who tend to game's like sandboxes that are already a bit challenging to learn would embrace the idea as long as it was well implemented.

Mickle

The strong get stronger and the weak gets weaker if you use single player rules on a multi player game.

#2, It needs to be F2P to get as many players as you can in one game.  Oh, ya, the Devs also need to make money.

Eldurian

Mickle said:

The strong get stronger and the weak gets weaker if you use single player rules on a multi player game.

Only if the reward grants stat disparity. Consult my signature for my opinion on that matter.

Ridelynn

I can remember, in Everquest, that it took me months of legwork, a lot of long nights camping rare drops from rare spawns, and more than a few events that took the help of my entire guild in order to finally complete my class Epic weapon.

That was a proud moment for me, and something I still think back fondly on.

In WoW Legion, I was handed an Artifact Weapon when after my first quest. It didn't have quite the same impact, even though in terms of game lore, it was roughly equivalent.

Bringing that back to rewarding for failure - the first certainly didn't ever reward me for failing, but there really the only way to "fail" that was to stop trying. There were a lot of steps, and some were challenging and I (and my friends and guildmates) died a lot in the process. Ultimately, the challenge involved a lot of patience, persistence, and teamwork. I was able to get my Epic, I returned the favor by helping dozens others do the same.

Then again, thinking of "failure" in terms of a long sweeping arc of quests, versus a single instance, is a bit different perspective.

Eldurian

I feel like most people read the title of this thread, didn't read the OP and then responded.

I get it, the OP is long (@Quizzical - You may want to consider using headers and bullet points to breakup the wall of text.) but if you don't bother reading what's being discussed why respond to the topic at all? You can skip on to the next topic without making a response. That is allowed.

k61977

I think I can see something in this, but yes his conclusion about rewards vs challenge is true.  If a person knows they will get more rewards from easier content because of time vs completion that is what they will do. 

A good way to instill something like this is to give a reward for failure that you must complete multiple times in order for it to be used.  An example is you made it to a dungeon boss fight but were unable to complete it or a quest line where you were at the last step and failed.  You could be given something were it takes a certain amount or pieces to join together to get loot on the level of what would have been given it you were able to complete it.

To explain the example the above think of it this way.  If it takes 5 pieces to complete something to get the reward but it takes about 30 minutes per piece to get, that is a lot of time put in to get a reward you could have gotten from the 30 minutes if you completed it.  It's the time vs reward, but getting rewarded for attempting and putting time in even after a failure.  The persistence of a person trying it over and over will be able to finally give a reward that may help them complete it if they keep trying.

I have actually seen a couple games do this before but can't think off the top of my head which they were.  This works because unless you spent the time to get all the way to the boss or the last part of say a multi-tier quest you don't get the reward for failing.  So it is basically giving you something for the attempt and time put in but using a checks system of step completion to stop someone from just starting it and then quitting  and still getting the reward. 

You can't reward failure every time either though, because then you do run into the issue of people just dying or quitting because they know they will be rewarded no matter the outcome.  Even giving smaller rewards based on completion rate isn't going to work because it will have the same outcome many times over with people just taking the easiest path.

Shaigh

I don't agree on having participation trophy for content. The reason why you give them out in tournaments is because you are dealing with kids and you want to hook them into activating themselves. With mmorpg you are mostly dealing with adults and we play because we enjoy playing.

The first part of the problem is that you will have to give out a lot of rewards and I find that current mmorpg already give out way too much rewards which undermine the feeling when you get stuff. The other part is that people are likely to abuse the living shit out of it.

I would rather see developers focus on making fun content for more types of players instead of focusing so much on rewards.

Shaigh

DMKano said:

Shaigh said:

I don't agree on having participation trophy for content. The reason why you give them out in tournaments is because you are dealing with kids and you want to hook them into activating themselves. With mmorpg you are mostly dealing with adults and we play because we enjoy playing.

The first part of the problem is that you will have to give out a lot of rewards and I find that current mmorpg already give out way too much rewards which undermine the feeling when you get stuff. The other part is that people are likely to abuse the living shit out of it.

I would rather see developers focus on making fun content for more types of players instead of focusing so much on rewards.

Thats not what OP said - he is NOT talking about participation trophies at all.

The reward for beating challenging content is the feeling you have after beating challenging content. I don't agree with getting rewards before you beat stuff. It sucks being stuck on things but the feeling you get when its all done is much sweeter because of it.

During this year my favorite game experience so far is Furi, a game with zero rewards. It was brutal, frustrating but so damn worth it.

Shaigh

DMKano said:

Shaigh said:

DMKano said:

Shaigh said:

I don't agree on having participation trophy for content. The reason why you give them out in tournaments is because you are dealing with kids and you want to hook them into activating themselves. With mmorpg you are mostly dealing with adults and we play because we enjoy playing.

The first part of the problem is that you will have to give out a lot of rewards and I find that current mmorpg already give out way too much rewards which undermine the feeling when you get stuff. The other part is that people are likely to abuse the living shit out of it.

I would rather see developers focus on making fun content for more types of players instead of focusing so much on rewards.

Thats not what OP said - he is NOT talking about participation trophies at all.

The reward for beating challenging content is the feeling you have after beating challenging content. I don't agree with getting rewards before you beat stuff. It sucks being stuck on things but the feeling you get when its all done is much sweeter because of it.

And rewards for beating challenging content would remain in OPs post. That wouldnt change.

What you get with only rewarding success in challenging MMORPGs - is players only engage in content that is almost 100% safe and guaranteed victory - aka players end up playing easy and safe.

Almost nobody even attempts high risk encounters when failure is punished hard (xp loss, level loss, item loss etc...)

That was OPs point.

A challenging game would actually have a high % of players attempting challenging encounters, not facerolling the easiest mobs that give the best progression/xp for time spent.

Few players go for the toughest content because they lack the time and/or skills to beat it. In the tougher encounters you will have the time where you get wiped out fairly quickly but once you learn the pattern and get something down below 50% its just a matter of time until you kill it. This doesn't include encounters that have 3-5 phases.

If you look at early wow raiding, in vanilla you did have plenty of people that played places like zulgurub and molten core, very few even saw naxxramas. The reason had more to do with how badly they would wipe without making any progress and less to do with them not being rewarded.

Its a much better solution if games focus on having entry dungeons and raids so that people can gradually learn to play better instead of focusing on rewards. It would also be an improvement if games would focus more on getting people to team up instead of facerolling their way alone up to cap.