Eh, just a common mistake of assuming players enjoy being hit by sticks. A failure to see challenges as challenges, instead mistaking the stick as the challenge. When you die in the heavily-checkpointed I Wanna Be The Guy you're only sent back a few seconds of gameplay, and yet the game is brutally challenging. This lets gameplay revolve around mastery, instead of repeating sections you've already mastered. He covers how repeating story segments is tedious and uninteresting to players, but he neglects the fact that repeating already-mastered gameplay segments is still quite tedious.
Lets quote Cadwell on the topic of creating flaws in game mechanics (such as potential fail scenarios);
"Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
"By designing for this, you really encourage player activity and reward."
"By incensing players to learn these tools, by putting them in situations where they have to use these tools, you actually get these players to sample in a way they actually excited about a larger percent of your content."
Quotes all pulled from GDC 20015 by Tom Cadwell.
The very fundamental point is that you are generating a better and more fleshed out user experience by pushing players to handle compromise and challenges that arise from the risk involved in using these tools and the potentials they offer both good and bad.
The continued flaw in your examples too is that you are drawing no distinction between games that are highly player skill driven versus those that are not. Hence why most all your example games are ones that are much simpler on the back end and driven by mechanics that are much more focused on player the scope of player input and reaction. They aren't trying to simulate a bunch of extraneous details about the player's character, they are delivering on a finite sliver in which player skill can have the most impact.
And that's not what a dominantly stat and character skill driven game plays like. There are, as stated previously, many automated elements that negate the potential for human failure by taking the control and consequence of human input out of the equation and relying on character statistics instead. This exactly is why, as has already been pointed out, there is compensation in the form of the character having their own scope of potential success and failure emulating the potential a human has to succeed fail at a task.
That's why, for as hard as some games you give example of may be called, they all generally boil down to a very finite set of mechanics and rules as to how a player will succeed. Just like your linked example being centered on jumping and shooting, has no actual upgrades, and the challenge is subsequently centered on how swarmed a level is based on the difficulty setting.
Brutally challenging? Maybe. Complex? No.
Many stat driven games are complex and have many components with many moving parts that a simple user input can not recreate the depth of. Automation is as a result mandatory, and with it the loss of player skill as a primary factor. Without anything to balance that loss of player skill you are making a weaker game.
As Jester mentioned, AI is a good solution if you can build the AI to deliver more contextually driven actions and events that way the scope of a user's interactive options isn't limited so directly by their means of input, but we've rarely seen an AI complex enough to predict and direct all this stuff yet nor have we seen context driven game elements really become a mainstay.
So for the moment probability rolls are the most actionable option for character skill driven experiences. I'm happy to see technology continue to progress and AI and game mechanics hit a point where it's no longer necessary, but I'm not delusional to the reality of gaming either.
Post edited by Deivos on
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Eh, just a common mistake of assuming players enjoy being hit by sticks. A failure to see challenges as challenges, instead mistaking the stick as the challenge. When you die in the heavily-checkpointed I Wanna Be The Guy you're only sent back a few seconds of gameplay, and yet the game is brutally challenging. This lets gameplay revolve around mastery, instead of repeating sections you've already mastered. He covers how repeating story segments is tedious and uninteresting to players, but he neglects the fact that repeating already-mastered gameplay segments is still quite tedious.
So you are saying my opinion and how I feel are incorrect and I should ask you whenever I get the urge to 'guess' about my own feelings and opinions?
So you are saying my opinion and how I feel are incorrect and I should ask you whenever I get the urge to 'guess' about my own feelings and opinions?
You are too funny.
You're entitled to an opinion of preferring games about risk over games about challenge.
My main point was that challenge is challenge and penalty is penalty. They're separate. Challenge is the skill required to avoid failure, and penalty is what happens after you fail (and thus typically involves no challenge of its own.) The video mistakes risk as part of the challenge, and that's just wrong.
So you shouldn't hold the wrong opinion that risk is challenge. It isn't.
My other point being that almost everyone enjoys games about interesting decisions (skill mastery, which happens as the player attempts to master challenge) but fewer players are interested in experiencing penalties/risks (because often those risks involve little, if any, decision-making.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
That's pretty simplistic seeing as challenge is also coping with failure and overcoming problems faced, not simple obstacle avoidance.
Risk presents challenge in that regard. You take the risks and accept them, roll with the punches, and try to come out ahead for it. There is a lot of skill in knowing when to take risks where and how to recover from a poor gamble.
Penalty is an interim consequence and a cause for reaction.
Please don't present a non-factual argument as if it's anything but your opinion.
And I would refer back to my previous post quoting Cadwell on the claim you make about people not wanting to take risks. Risk is the fundamental nature of gambling and many traditional RPG mechanics. It's also the monetary driver of many Free to Play business models ( a bulk of sales across many games coming from the likes of lockboxes with randomized loot). People are known to openly accept risks because they perceive it to deliver a greater reward and they feel grater gratitude on a mental/psychological level.
Knowing there is a chance of failure, experiencing it, and coming out ahead still in the long run makes the experience all the better than if one knows the outcome always remains the same.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Again, this is all opinion. So stating my opinion is fine. It doesnt have to be rank and file with yours to be part of the dicussion. There is no right or wrong. If not we wouldn't have so much randomly generated combat and actions in the sub genre let alone RPG genre itself.
No Madden is stat based game. A defender will win or lose based on random generation to a runner. A catcher may drop a pass by himself. A throw may be bad with no pressure. Interceptions happen less than they should to allow more player mistake.
In terms of MMORPG there is nothing wrong with failure of spells, failing to steal, failure to not open chest or whatever failure based on your character's skill. It's how RPGs have always been. The influx of action is a new thing borrowed from action adventure games.
"There is no right or wrong" is wrong. We're discussing how games are designed. There are definitely better and worse ways to do that, because nobody says "This game sucks, but it's the designer's opinion so I'll play it."
So a poorly-conceived opinion on how to create a game is actually wrong. And an opinion rooted in strong design principles ("every element must justify its existence", "a game is a series of interesting decisions" paired with the knowledge that random failure doesn't create interesting decisions) is actually right.
Comments like "the influx of action" make you sound extremely inexperienced as a game. Master of Orion 2 (a turn-based strategy game) didn't have random missing (and the new MOO doesn't have it either.), Chess didn't have pieces that randomly failed to capture their target, and you can find plenty of games (action and otherwise) in the best-selling games list which don't have random missing. Whenever I hear an RPG gamer use the term "action game" or "console game" it immediately signals that they probably have very little experience outside their favorite genre.
How games are designed tell me that games based on stats have random generation based on stats vast majority of the time from sports games to RPG to strategy games.
Generally only games based on action have pure flat results like Mario. Games based on characters, stats and strategy have random generation. RPG are the same way. The more gameplay is dictated by actions the less things character skill automated and the less random generated outcomes.
A game like Dark Soul is based on players action input and Dragon Age Origins combat is character driven. Dark Souls you swing and connect if you hit. In DA:O your character fights based on stats.
Edit: half of this post is gone.
RNG is a huge part of of RPGs. Hit, miss, block, dodge, resist, criticals and success and failure of actions are based on stats and RNG. Claiming this is wrong or right is plain silly. Especially when WoW your gaming bible is just like this.
The only wrong opinion is your narrow views and opinion that that your inconsistent opinions are right all the time. What developers decide to include as failures based on RNG is purely based on taste and game design. Fizzles, weakness, chances to miss or be hit, open a lock, successful dialog and etc based on stats and RNG is the staple RPG.
How games are designed tell me that games based on stats have random generation based on stats vast majority of the time from sports games to RPG to strategy games.
Generally only games based on action have pure flat results like Mario. Games based on characters, stats and strategy have random generation. RPG are the same way. The more gameplay is dictated by actions the less things character skill automated and the less random generated outcomes.
A game like Dark Soul is based on players action input and Dragon Age Origins combat is character driven. Dark Souls you swing and connect if you hit. In DA:O your character fights based on stats.
Edit: half of this post is gone.
RNG is a huge part of of RPGs. Hit, miss, block, dodge, resist, criticals and success and failure of actions are based on stats and RNG. Claiming this is wrong or right is plain silly. Especially when WoW your gaming bible is just like this.
The only wrong opinion is your narrow views and opinion that that your inconsistent opinions are right all the time. What developers decide to include as failures based on RNG is purely based on taste and game design. Fizzles, weakness, chances to miss or be hit, open a lock, successful dialog and etc based on stats and RNG is the staple RPG.
Again, if you want to discuss this with any sense of completeness then you're going to have to learn to distinguish the purposeless forms of RNG (missing/fizzles) from the purposeful forms (crits, procs, damage variance, etc)
This will help you ascend out of the mire of "RNG is a huge part of RPGs" to discuss things at the same level I'm discussing them at, which is that miss/fizzle in particular lack purpose. I've covered the distinct purposes of many RNG elements that RPGs have, in earlier posts in this thread.
The problem is missing lacks a similar purpose. Without presenting a reason for the design element, it lacks a reason. And as covered before: any design element which cannot justify its existence is unnecessary and should be removed.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
How games are designed tell me that games based on stats have random generation based on stats vast majority of the time from sports games to RPG to strategy games.
Generally only games based on action have pure flat results like Mario. Games based on characters, stats and strategy have random generation. RPG are the same way. The more gameplay is dictated by actions the less things character skill automated and the less random generated outcomes.
A game like Dark Soul is based on players action input and Dragon Age Origins combat is character driven. Dark Souls you swing and connect if you hit. In DA:O your character fights based on stats.
Edit: half of this post is gone.
RNG is a huge part of of RPGs. Hit, miss, block, dodge, resist, criticals and success and failure of actions are based on stats and RNG. Claiming this is wrong or right is plain silly. Especially when WoW your gaming bible is just like this.
The only wrong opinion is your narrow views and opinion that that your inconsistent opinions are right all the time. What developers decide to include as failures based on RNG is purely based on taste and game design. Fizzles, weakness, chances to miss or be hit, open a lock, successful dialog and etc based on stats and RNG is the staple RPG.
Again, if you want to discuss this with any sense of completeness then you're going to have to learn to distinguish the purposeless forms of RNG (missing/fizzles) from the purposeful forms (crits, procs, damage variance, etc)
This will help you ascend out of the mire of "RNG is a huge part of RPGs" to discuss things at the same level I'm discussing them at, which is that miss/fizzle in particular lack purpose. I've covered the distinct purposes of many RNG elements that RPGs have, in earlier posts in this thread.
The problem is missing lacks a similar purpose. Without presenting a reason for the design element, it lacks a reason. And as covered before: any design element which cannot justify its existence is unnecessary and should be removed.
All opinion. Opinion based on what you like as fact vs. your opinion. Acceptance that ideas you don't like aren't inherently bad would take you a long way.
The point of say fizzles were to show skill in casting. Magic failing especially by those unpracticed or learning more powerful spells is very common trope in fantasy. In EQ newer players fizzled more than experienced who rarely did. Players learning higher level spells than their skill fizzled more. You can say you don't like the purpose but that's just your opinion of what you think is worthy and not worthy.
I could say if I am swinging my sword inside a character yet I am being dodged or a sword has no effect on someone because they're higher level is wrong or bad game play It's an opinion. It's pretentious to always claim what you like is superior because you say so.
How games are designed tell me that games based on stats have random generation based on stats vast majority of the time from sports games to RPG to strategy games.
Generally only games based on action have pure flat results like Mario. Games based on characters, stats and strategy have random generation. RPG are the same way. The more gameplay is dictated by actions the less things character skill automated and the less random generated outcomes.
A game like Dark Soul is based on players action input and Dragon Age Origins combat is character driven. Dark Souls you swing and connect if you hit. In DA:O your character fights based on stats.
Edit: half of this post is gone.
RNG is a huge part of of RPGs. Hit, miss, block, dodge, resist, criticals and success and failure of actions are based on stats and RNG. Claiming this is wrong or right is plain silly. Especially when WoW your gaming bible is just like this.
The only wrong opinion is your narrow views and opinion that that your inconsistent opinions are right all the time. What developers decide to include as failures based on RNG is purely based on taste and game design. Fizzles, weakness, chances to miss or be hit, open a lock, successful dialog and etc based on stats and RNG is the staple RPG.
Again, if you want to discuss ...
Two quotes of posts already made correcting the false statements you just shared;
"And I would refer back to my previous post quoting Cadwell on the claim you make about people not wanting to take risks. Risk is the fundamental nature of gambling and many traditional RPG mechanics. It's also the monetary driver of many Free to Play business models ( a bulk of sales across many games coming from the likes of lockboxes with randomized loot). People are known to openly accept risks because they perceive it to deliver a greater reward and they feel grater gratitude on a mental/psychological level.
Knowing there is a chance of failure, experiencing it, and coming out ahead still in the long run makes the experience all the better than if one knows the outcome always remains the same."
"There are, as stated previously, many automated elements that negate the potential for human failure by taking the control and consequence of human input out of the equation and relying on character statistics instead. This exactly is why, as has already been pointed out, there is compensation in the form of the character having their own scope of potential success and failure emulating the potential a human has to succeed fail at a task."
You have stated opinions that have opposing opinions, and claimed facts that were proven wrong. Lets not go drifting away from reality here.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
All opinion. Opinion based on what you like as fact vs. your opinion. Acceptance that ideas you don't like aren't inherently bad would take you a long way.
The point of say fizzles were to show skill in casting. Magic failing especially by those unpracticed or learning more powerful spells is very common trope in fantasy. In EQ newer players fizzled more than experienced who rarely did. Players learning higher level spells than their skill fizzled more. You can say you don't like the purpose but that's just your opinion of what you think is worthy and not worthy.
I could say if I am swinging my sword inside a character yet I am being dodged or a sword has no effect on someone because they're higher level is wrong or bad game play It's an opinion. It's pretentious to always claim what you like is superior because you say so.
"A game's gameplay should suck to perpetuate the aesthetic that magic is hard," is not a compelling argument. A mechanic justified only loosely by aesthetic which actively reduces gameplay quality is simply not a worthwhile mechanic. It fails to justify its presence.
Calling it pretentious is just knowledge-rejection. Again if you're not willing to examine things at a deeper level to understand why ideas are flawed and should be improved, that's fine. Just don't post those bad ideas, and instead spend time learning from those who have bothered understanding things at a deeper level. You don't see me on car forums (which I have no expertise whatsoever) telling mechanics and car designers how to design a car well; if I ever bothered to visit such a forum, I would focus on reading and learning rather than trying to pass my flimsy uneducated opinion off as superior.
While challenging expert opinions is healthy to a degree (when backed by solid logic and/or evidence), there are other experts out there who feel the same frustration I do regarding modern disregard for expertise. The Death of Expertise is a good one, and a more recent article on politics had an eerily similar vibe in parts, where even in the political sector there's a disregard for established politicians to such a degree that a completely unqualified reality show host can be a serious contender for US Presidency.
You want to believe it's all opinion, but meanwhile all of the most successful games are using the model I'm describing. Evidence is on my side.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You want to believe it's all opinion, but meanwhile all of the most successful games are using the model I'm describing. Evidence is on my side.
Except for, you know, WoW and most other character stat-driven games.
As for your made-up quote argument, let's requote Cadwell on the matter; "Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
"By designing for this, you really encourage player activity and reward."
"By incensing players to learn these tools, by putting them in situations where they have to use these tools, you actually get these players to sample in a way they actually excited about a larger percent of your content."
Besides which; "In RPGs, as a genre that's dominated by complex automated systems, player skill is sidelined in many cases by the background mechanics in play. The "fail rate" and challenge of play is as a result lower than it would be as a player skill driven game would be, and as consequence to balance the challenge back out the element of success/failure is integrated into the automated systems to emulate the nature of a person's performance range.
The less automated mechanics driving the game the more player skill matters, and the less you see RNG as a balancing factor. The more complex and automated a system becomes the more you see the RNG element because it's a compensation for the risk lost on player input."
No one is disregarding "expert opinions", they are noting that an opinion is not a fact that and your opinions are not absolutes. I've been a dev on multiple MMO projects already on both the art , design, and (mostly) administrative side, yet you disagree with me so vehemently that you would rather block me than learn anything. Should make it obvious enough that people within the industry itself have very different perspectives.
Instead of espousing false authority that you have yet to prove even possessing, try to build some actual authority by establishing a logical argument.
Post edited by Deivos on
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
While challenging expert opinions is healthy to a degree (when backed by solid logic and/or evidence), there are other experts out there who feel the same frustration I do regarding modern disregard for expertise. The Death of Expertise is a good one, and a more recent article on politics had an eerily similar vibe in parts, where even in the political sector there's a disregard for established politicians to such a degree that a completely unqualified reality show host can be a serious contender for US Presidency.
If a person is to talk about expertise, then the expertise espoused needs to be a known value that has a clear definition of what it is and how it applies to the content an individual is talking on. What makes it all the more dangerous is when an individual claims a form of authority with a vague claim or for a finite scope of experience that they then assume qualifies them to talk of a broad spectrum of knowledge and familiarity well beyond their scope.
"This kind of expert is, perhaps, most dangerous, as they can claim some connection without proof of any true knowledge of the facts."
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
"A game's gameplay should suck to perpetuate the aesthetic that magic is hard," is not a compelling argument. A mechanic justified only loosely by aesthetic which actively reduces gameplay quality is simply not a worthwhile mechanic. It fails to justify its presence.
Opinion: a personal view, attitude, or appraisal.
What sucks or not is opinion. You're opinion. No it reflect character skill not aesthetics. Its no different than a warrior missing someone at point blank range while his weapon goes though the target.
Calling it pretentious is just knowledge-rejection. Again if you're not willing to examine things at a deeper level to understand why ideas are flawed and should be improved, that's fine. Just don't post those bad ideas, and instead spend time learning from those who have bothered understanding things at a deeper level. You don't see me on car forums (which I have no expertise whatsoever) telling mechanics and car designers how to design a car well; if I ever bothered to visit such a forum, I would focus on reading and learning rather than trying to pass my flimsy uneducated opinion off as superior.
Pretentious: attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
I have been active in the MMORPG community since 1995. I have studied game theory for years. I have discussed ideas with people who develop MMORPG. Am I a developer? No. But I do know why things work and don't work. I do know why things are done a certain way. You don't even develop MMORPG.
While challenging expert opinions is healthy to a degree (when backed by solid logic and/or evidence), there are other experts out there who feel the same frustration I do regarding modern disregard for expertise. The Death of Expertise is a good one, and a more recent article on politics had an eerily similar vibe in parts, where even in the political sector there's a disregard for established politicians to such a degree that a completely unqualified reality show host can be a serious contender for US Presidency.
Hypocrisy: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform.
You said yourself you are not a MMORPG developer. Yet many of the developers of MMORPG you have quoted disagree with just about everything else you believe. Yet you in turn attempted to discredited them. So I guess this doesn't applies to you. You're right because you say you're right.
You want to believe it's all opinion, but meanwhile all of the most successful games are using the model I'm describing. Evidence is on my side.
It is opinion. I am certain it would have been if it had fizzles or not.
But that's not what the thread's about at all. It's about whether failure should just randomly happen to you.
When failure happens to you randomly, it's like a movie. (Your interactions were meaningless; you made the right decision, but then the game gave you failure anyway.)
Whereas when failure only happens due to poor decisions, your decisions will be consistently meaningful.
Games have rules, rules are abstractions. You can design it anyway you can. I think random failures are great. I love how they rub the control freaks the wrong way. They type of people who can't handle random. As the bard wrote: A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards Hast ta’en with equal thanks.
IMO, one of the things we need is more failures and losses within games. It is more interesting to have a chance to lose things that to have a game cater to people who need to win at everything. Nobody deserves to win at everything.
As stated it is a design choice. Random failures with loss is fine and a design choice. Not having that is a design choice as well. Neither is better or worse than the other. A person might make it so.
Thank god I didn't grow up in the age of everyone gets a trophy for showing up. That doesn't sound like fun to me.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
"A game's gameplay should suck to perpetuate the aesthetic that magic is hard," is not a compelling argument. A mechanic justified only loosely by aesthetic which actively reduces gameplay quality is simply not a worthwhile mechanic. It fails to justify its presence.
Opinion: a personal view, attitude, or appraisal.
What sucks or not is opinion. You're opinion. No it reflect character skill not aesthetics. Its no different than a warrior missing someone at point blank range while his weapon goes though the target.
Calling it pretentious is just knowledge-rejection. Again if you're not willing to examine things at a deeper level to understand why ideas are flawed and should be improved, that's fine. Just don't post those bad ideas, and instead spend time learning from those who have bothered understanding things at a deeper level. You don't see me on car forums (which I have no expertise whatsoever) telling mechanics and car designers how to design a car well; if I ever bothered to visit such a forum, I would focus on reading and learning rather than trying to pass my flimsy uneducated opinion off as superior.
Pretentious: attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
I have been active in the MMORPG community since 1995. I have studied game theory for years. I have discussed ideas with people who develop MMORPG. Am I a developer? No. But I do know why things work and don't work. I do know why things are done a certain way. You don't even develop MMORPG.
While challenging expert opinions is healthy to a degree (when backed by solid logic and/or evidence), there are other experts out there who feel the same frustration I do regarding modern disregard for expertise. The Death of Expertise is a good one, and a more recent article on politics had an eerily similar vibe in parts, where even in the political sector there's a disregard for established politicians to such a degree that a completely unqualified reality show host can be a serious contender for US Presidency.
Hypocrisy: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform.
You said yourself you are not a MMORPG developer. Yet many of the developers of MMORPG you have quoted disagree with just about everything else you believe. Yet you in turn attempted to discredited them. So I guess this doesn't applies to you. You're right because you say you're right.
You want to believe it's all opinion, but meanwhile all of the most successful games are using the model I'm describing. Evidence is on my side.
It is opinion. I am certain it would have been if it had fizzles or not.
What I'm describing are the opinions of the majority, as shown by which games succeed. Your attempts to belittle it as opinion are just a way for you to distract from actually discussing the topic in a rational manner. Without logic or evidence, it's all you have.
As for knowledge rejection, you could've "been part of the MMORPG community" since birth and still had wrong beliefs. For example nearly everyone voting for Trump has been part of the American community since birth, and yet there they are voting for Trump!
All game design is the same. All games at their core work off the same set of core compulsions, spiced with a variety of aesthetics. So your attempts to belittle my experience as irrelevant are just a way for you to distract from actually discussing the topic in a rational manner. Without logic or evidence, it's all you have.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think they should. I think as long as they aren't the master of something then they should have a chance to screw it up. Spells fizzling, gathering failing, cooking failing, fishing failing. I just feel like people can't be perfect at everything in a universe, that wouldn't make sense otherwise everyone would be the master of every skill ever and progression would be pointless other than to learn new things.
Games have rules, rules are abstractions. You can design it anyway you can. I think random failures are great. I love how they rub the control freaks the wrong way. They type of people who can't handle random. As the bard wrote: A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards Hast ta’en with equal thanks.
IMO, one of the things we need is more failures and losses within games. It is more interesting to have a chance to lose things that to have a game cater to people who need to win at everything. Nobody deserves to win at everything.
As stated it is a design choice. Random failures with loss is fine and a design choice. Not having that is a design choice as well. Neither is better or worse than the other. A person might make it so.
Thank god I didn't grow up in the age of everyone gets a trophy for showing up. That doesn't sound like fun to me.
It sounds like you understand designing games this way is actually worse for "control freaks" (which actually describes the most common way games are enjoyed by most players) and that deliberately bad game design that makes a lot of players quit is simply what you want out of a game. That's fine, but just learn to separate what actually is good game design from your personal tastes.
Failure is a red herring. It's not the actual underlying thing players are after. The most common way games are entertaining to people is in mastering patterns, so depth is what most players are after. Depth implies perfect play will be very difficult to achieve.
The best form of depth is where each game session feels like a step towards perfection. You didn't immediately play the hardest (deepest) puzzle at the end of Portal. You started at level 1 where you discovered the basics, and each level was a step towards the mastery that would be required in that final level.
So while failure is often involved in deep gameplay, it's actually not required (tons of Portal levels cannot be failed. It'll take you longer to complete them, but they can't be failed.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You just made two more posts espousing what is little more than opinion.
Like claiming what the "best form of depth" is, which is incongruous with prior statements that the best form of depth is a focus on "interesting decision making". There are many games you can call deep where the players do not personally grow at all, but experience depth through the puzzles and gameplay.
You also contradict yourself on the statement "depth implies perfect play will be difficult to achieve" as just prior you denounce failure as inconsequential, yet failure is the consequence of difficulty.
This isn't even circular logic, it's a downward spiral.
Don't go insulting other people and claiming they have no logic or evidence when you very blatantly are lacking it completely yourself.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
"A game's gameplay should suck to perpetuate the aesthetic that magic is hard," is not a compelling argument. A mechanic justified only loosely by aesthetic which actively reduces gameplay quality is simply not a worthwhile mechanic. It fails to justify its presence.
Opinion: a personal view, attitude, or appraisal.
What sucks or not is opinion. You're opinion. No it reflect character skill not aesthetics. Its no different than a warrior missing someone at point blank range while his weapon goes though the target.
Calling it pretentious is just knowledge-rejection. Again if you're not willing to examine things at a deeper level to understand why ideas are flawed and should be improved, that's fine. Just don't post those bad ideas, and instead spend time learning from those who have bothered understanding things at a deeper level. You don't see me on car forums (which I have no expertise whatsoever) telling mechanics and car designers how to design a car well; if I ever bothered to visit such a forum, I would focus on reading and learning rather than trying to pass my flimsy uneducated opinion off as superior.
Pretentious: attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
I have been active in the MMORPG community since 1995. I have studied game theory for years. I have discussed ideas with people who develop MMORPG. Am I a developer? No. But I do know why things work and don't work. I do know why things are done a certain way. You don't even develop MMORPG.
While challenging expert opinions is healthy to a degree (when backed by solid logic and/or evidence), there are other experts out there who feel the same frustration I do regarding modern disregard for expertise. The Death of Expertise is a good one, and a more recent article on politics had an eerily similar vibe in parts, where even in the political sector there's a disregard for established politicians to such a degree that a completely unqualified reality show host can be a serious contender for US Presidency.
Hypocrisy: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform.
You said yourself you are not a MMORPG developer. Yet many of the developers of MMORPG you have quoted disagree with just about everything else you believe. Yet you in turn attempted to discredited them. So I guess this doesn't applies to you. You're right because you say you're right.
You want to believe it's all opinion, but meanwhile all of the most successful games are using the model I'm describing. Evidence is on my side.
It is opinion. I am certain it would have been if it had fizzles or not.
What I'm describing are the opinions of the majority, as shown by which games succeed. Your attempts to belittle it as opinion are just a way for you to distract from actually discussing the topic in a rational manner. Without logic or evidence, it's all you have.
As for knowledge rejection, you could've "been part of the MMORPG community" since birth and still had wrong beliefs. For example nearly everyone voting for Trump has been part of the American community since birth, and yet there they are voting for Trump!
All game design is the same. All games at their core work off the same set of core compulsions, spiced with a variety of aesthetics. So your attempts to belittle my experience as irrelevant are just a way for you to distract from actually discussing the topic in a rational manner. Without logic or evidence, it's all you have.
All game design is not the same. Games are psychological in nature and different genre bring out different responses. I am not belittling your experience you are if you think designing a MMORPG is not the same as single player game at all.
Voting for Trump is not wrong. There are reasons why people do even if I can't stand the man. Again you talk too much in absolutes and your opinion makes it right. And RNG games have sold millions.
I guess it kind of depends. I feel like you should be able to fail on combines on even very expensive items while crafting. That gives it some excitement. Make it so you have a certain percentage to fail, even on things you are really good at making (like 1% there maybe). Then you can risk doing something you have a 90% chance to fail at that is super expensive but might be a huge upgrade. Gives crafting more excitement than "gather mats, hit button".
That being said, you already kind of do "fail" sometimes on raiding. Some guilds stall out on certain encounters and those sort of gate them there. I would think some quests that you could fail and not do again would be cool as long as you got the story and lore behind them regardless and it didn't really nail you as far as gear goes (would suck to fail a quest that had a best in slot item in it or something). But take all of this with a grain of salt. I am a fan of old school EQ, where you could lose all of your gear, where you could lose levels, where getting your gear back was an adventure all its own and healers were pretty much required so they can give you rezzes so you don't lose more than 4% exp. Thus why I cannot wait for Pantheon, and it will have a system in it (perception) that will kind of be like that I guess. If your perception isn't high enough, you might miss quests.
In the easy mode world of gaming you must never fail, now we cannot fail.
You can have systems like crafting where you need to try a lot to finally succeed but that's about it. If you are going to tie these into the P2W part of the game like in BDO then that element of crafting is key to your characters PvP strength.
But outside of that games are like a ride on a roller coaster, it looks dangerous but never is.
I think they should as i personally enjoy a bit of risk in games. Sadly though these days most games seem to have become nothing more than continuous self back patting simulators where everyone's a winner. It seems many gamers don't want risk or challenge, just continuous positive reinforcement.
This is what game designers are doing, driven by psychologists or psychology research. Look into Sid Meier, for example. In many of his talks he references gamer psychology. He believes games should be something that make us feel good.
I remember one speech where he stated negative randomness should never be used. Negative randomness would be like the random disasters in Sim City. He believes positive randomness can be good. For example, you randomly reach a breakthrough in research. This all has to do with how the reward pathways in the human brain work. Ultimately, it's about keeping the gamer happy and playing.
*vomited in my throat a little*
Nothing but the truth sadly. I'll never play Sid Meier's games again. Ironically, I've never played one anyway. Lol.
I got advice for all of you noobs getting caught up in arguments in this forum or elsewhere. You'll never resolve most of them. People feel differently about thigns and are drawn to different games. Just realize it's ok to like what you like. Play what you like. Stop arguing. Sometimes an apple is just an apple, not on orange.
If ya looked at the time stamps, seems it was "resolved" three years ago. A necro post with a bit of a side-grade to it's topic randomly dredged it up.
Failing at in game actions is not a new thing, the original Everquest had it as a foundation of the various skills, as a Monk you could choose to have all the attack abilities, but in reality you used the ones you were most proficient at, which took practice, roundhouse kick or eagle punch, you needed to practice them first to use them in combat or risk having them fail, a particularly important skill to work on was feign death, a failure meant they kept on attacking you, which in Everquest had predictable results.
Comments
"Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
"By designing for this, you really encourage player activity and reward."
"By incensing players to learn these tools, by putting them in situations where they have to use these tools, you actually get these players to sample in a way they actually excited about a larger percent of your content."
Quotes all pulled from GDC 20015 by Tom Cadwell.
The very fundamental point is that you are generating a better and more fleshed out user experience by pushing players to handle compromise and challenges that arise from the risk involved in using these tools and the potentials they offer both good and bad.
The continued flaw in your examples too is that you are drawing no distinction between games that are highly player skill driven versus those that are not. Hence why most all your example games are ones that are much simpler on the back end and driven by mechanics that are much more focused on player the scope of player input and reaction. They aren't trying to simulate a bunch of extraneous details about the player's character, they are delivering on a finite sliver in which player skill can have the most impact.
And that's not what a dominantly stat and character skill driven game plays like. There are, as stated previously, many automated elements that negate the potential for human failure by taking the control and consequence of human input out of the equation and relying on character statistics instead. This exactly is why, as has already been pointed out, there is compensation in the form of the character having their own scope of potential success and failure emulating the potential a human has to succeed fail at a task.
That's why, for as hard as some games you give example of may be called, they all generally boil down to a very finite set of mechanics and rules as to how a player will succeed. Just like your linked example being centered on jumping and shooting, has no actual upgrades, and the challenge is subsequently centered on how swarmed a level is based on the difficulty setting.
Brutally challenging? Maybe. Complex? No.
Many stat driven games are complex and have many components with many moving parts that a simple user input can not recreate the depth of. Automation is as a result mandatory, and with it the loss of player skill as a primary factor. Without anything to balance that loss of player skill you are making a weaker game.
As Jester mentioned, AI is a good solution if you can build the AI to deliver more contextually driven actions and events that way the scope of a user's interactive options isn't limited so directly by their means of input, but we've rarely seen an AI complex enough to predict and direct all this stuff yet nor have we seen context driven game elements really become a mainstay.
So for the moment probability rolls are the most actionable option for character skill driven experiences. I'm happy to see technology continue to progress and AI and game mechanics hit a point where it's no longer necessary, but I'm not delusional to the reality of gaming either.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You are too funny.
My main point was that challenge is challenge and penalty is penalty. They're separate. Challenge is the skill required to avoid failure, and penalty is what happens after you fail (and thus typically involves no challenge of its own.) The video mistakes risk as part of the challenge, and that's just wrong.
So you shouldn't hold the wrong opinion that risk is challenge. It isn't.
My other point being that almost everyone enjoys games about interesting decisions (skill mastery, which happens as the player attempts to master challenge) but fewer players are interested in experiencing penalties/risks (because often those risks involve little, if any, decision-making.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Risk presents challenge in that regard. You take the risks and accept them, roll with the punches, and try to come out ahead for it. There is a lot of skill in knowing when to take risks where and how to recover from a poor gamble.
Penalty is an interim consequence and a cause for reaction.
Please don't present a non-factual argument as if it's anything but your opinion.
And I would refer back to my previous post quoting Cadwell on the claim you make about people not wanting to take risks. Risk is the fundamental nature of gambling and many traditional RPG mechanics. It's also the monetary driver of many Free to Play business models ( a bulk of sales across many games coming from the likes of lockboxes with randomized loot). People are known to openly accept risks because they perceive it to deliver a greater reward and they feel grater gratitude on a mental/psychological level.
Knowing there is a chance of failure, experiencing it, and coming out ahead still in the long run makes the experience all the better than if one knows the outcome always remains the same.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Generally only games based on action have pure flat results like Mario. Games based on characters, stats and strategy have random generation. RPG are the same way. The more gameplay is dictated by actions the less things character skill automated and the less random generated outcomes.
A game like Dark Soul is based on players action input and Dragon Age Origins combat is character driven. Dark Souls you swing and connect if you hit. In DA:O your character fights based on stats.
Edit: half of this post is gone.
RNG is a huge part of of RPGs. Hit, miss, block, dodge, resist, criticals and success and failure of actions are based on stats and RNG. Claiming this is wrong or right is plain silly. Especially when WoW your gaming bible is just like this.
The only wrong opinion is your narrow views and opinion that that your inconsistent opinions are right all the time. What developers decide to include as failures based on RNG is purely based on taste and game design. Fizzles, weakness, chances to miss or be hit, open a lock, successful dialog and etc based on stats and RNG is the staple RPG.
This will help you ascend out of the mire of "RNG is a huge part of RPGs" to discuss things at the same level I'm discussing them at, which is that miss/fizzle in particular lack purpose. I've covered the distinct purposes of many RNG elements that RPGs have, in earlier posts in this thread.
The problem is missing lacks a similar purpose. Without presenting a reason for the design element, it lacks a reason. And as covered before: any design element which cannot justify its existence is unnecessary and should be removed.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The point of say fizzles were to show skill in casting. Magic failing especially by those unpracticed or learning more powerful spells is very common trope in fantasy. In EQ newer players fizzled more than experienced who rarely did. Players learning higher level spells than their skill fizzled more. You can say you don't like the purpose but that's just your opinion of what you think is worthy and not worthy.
I could say if I am swinging my sword inside a character yet I am being dodged or a sword has no effect on someone because they're higher level is wrong or bad game play It's an opinion. It's pretentious to always claim what you like is superior because you say so.
"And I would refer back to my previous post quoting Cadwell on the claim you make about people not wanting to take risks. Risk is the fundamental nature of gambling and many traditional RPG mechanics. It's also the monetary driver of many Free to Play business models ( a bulk of sales across many games coming from the likes of lockboxes with randomized loot). People are known to openly accept risks because they perceive it to deliver a greater reward and they feel grater gratitude on a mental/psychological level.
Knowing there is a chance of failure, experiencing it, and coming out ahead still in the long run makes the experience all the better than if one knows the outcome always remains the same."
"There are, as stated previously, many automated elements that negate the potential for human failure by taking the control and consequence of human input out of the equation and relying on character statistics instead. This exactly is why, as has already been pointed out, there is compensation in the form of the character having their own scope of potential success and failure emulating the potential a human has to succeed fail at a task."
You have stated opinions that have opposing opinions, and claimed facts that were proven wrong. Lets not go drifting away from reality here.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Calling it pretentious is just knowledge-rejection. Again if you're not willing to examine things at a deeper level to understand why ideas are flawed and should be improved, that's fine. Just don't post those bad ideas, and instead spend time learning from those who have bothered understanding things at a deeper level. You don't see me on car forums (which I have no expertise whatsoever) telling mechanics and car designers how to design a car well; if I ever bothered to visit such a forum, I would focus on reading and learning rather than trying to pass my flimsy uneducated opinion off as superior.
While challenging expert opinions is healthy to a degree (when backed by solid logic and/or evidence), there are other experts out there who feel the same frustration I do regarding modern disregard for expertise. The Death of Expertise is a good one, and a more recent article on politics had an eerily similar vibe in parts, where even in the political sector there's a disregard for established politicians to such a degree that a completely unqualified reality show host can be a serious contender for US Presidency.
You want to believe it's all opinion, but meanwhile all of the most successful games are using the model I'm describing. Evidence is on my side.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
As for your made-up quote argument, let's requote Cadwell on the matter;
"Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
"By designing for this, you really encourage player activity and reward."
"By incensing players to learn these tools, by putting them in situations where they have to use these tools, you actually get these players to sample in a way they actually excited about a larger percent of your content."
Besides which;
"In RPGs, as a genre that's dominated by complex automated systems, player skill is sidelined in many cases by the background mechanics in play. The "fail rate" and challenge of play is as a result lower than it would be as a player skill driven game would be, and as consequence to balance the challenge back out the element of success/failure is integrated into the automated systems to emulate the nature of a person's performance range.
The less automated mechanics driving the game the more player skill matters, and the less you see RNG as a balancing factor. The more complex and automated a system becomes the more you see the RNG element because it's a compensation for the risk lost on player input."
No one is disregarding "expert opinions", they are noting that an opinion is not a fact that and your opinions are not absolutes. I've been a dev on multiple MMO projects already on both the art , design, and (mostly) administrative side, yet you disagree with me so vehemently that you would rather block me than learn anything. Should make it obvious enough that people within the industry itself have very different perspectives.
Instead of espousing false authority that you have yet to prove even possessing, try to build some actual authority by establishing a logical argument.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
If a person is to talk about expertise, then the expertise espoused needs to be a known value that has a clear definition of what it is and how it applies to the content an individual is talking on. What makes it all the more dangerous is when an individual claims a form of authority with a vague claim or for a finite scope of experience that they then assume qualifies them to talk of a broad spectrum of knowledge and familiarity well beyond their scope.
"This kind of expert is, perhaps, most dangerous, as they can claim some connection without proof of any true knowledge of the facts."
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
What sucks or not is opinion. You're opinion. No it reflect character skill not aesthetics. Its no different than a warrior missing someone at point blank range while his weapon goes though the target.
Pretentious: attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
I have been active in the MMORPG community since 1995. I have studied game theory for years. I have discussed ideas with people who develop MMORPG. Am I a developer? No. But I do know why things work and don't work. I do know why things are done a certain way. You don't even develop MMORPG.
Hypocrisy: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform.
You said yourself you are not a MMORPG developer. Yet many of the developers of MMORPG you have quoted disagree with just about everything else you believe. Yet you in turn attempted to discredited them. So I guess this doesn't applies to you. You're right because you say you're right.
It is opinion. I am certain it would have been if it had fizzles or not.
Games have rules, rules are abstractions. You can design it anyway you can. I think random failures are great. I love how they rub the control freaks the wrong way. They type of people who can't handle random. As the bard wrote: A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards Hast ta’en with equal thanks.
IMO, one of the things we need is more failures and losses within games. It is more interesting to have a chance to lose things that to have a game cater to people who need to win at everything. Nobody deserves to win at everything.
As stated it is a design choice. Random failures with loss is fine and a design choice. Not having that is a design choice as well. Neither is better or worse than the other. A person might make it so.
Thank god I didn't grow up in the age of everyone gets a trophy for showing up. That doesn't sound like fun to me.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
As for knowledge rejection, you could've "been part of the MMORPG community" since birth and still had wrong beliefs. For example nearly everyone voting for Trump has been part of the American community since birth, and yet there they are voting for Trump!
All game design is the same. All games at their core work off the same set of core compulsions, spiced with a variety of aesthetics. So your attempts to belittle my experience as irrelevant are just a way for you to distract from actually discussing the topic in a rational manner. Without logic or evidence, it's all you have.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Failure is a red herring. It's not the actual underlying thing players are after. The most common way games are entertaining to people is in mastering patterns, so depth is what most players are after. Depth implies perfect play will be very difficult to achieve.
The best form of depth is where each game session feels like a step towards perfection. You didn't immediately play the hardest (deepest) puzzle at the end of Portal. You started at level 1 where you discovered the basics, and each level was a step towards the mastery that would be required in that final level.
So while failure is often involved in deep gameplay, it's actually not required (tons of Portal levels cannot be failed. It'll take you longer to complete them, but they can't be failed.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Like claiming what the "best form of depth" is, which is incongruous with prior statements that the best form of depth is a focus on "interesting decision making". There are many games you can call deep where the players do not personally grow at all, but experience depth through the puzzles and gameplay.
You also contradict yourself on the statement "depth implies perfect play will be difficult to achieve" as just prior you denounce failure as inconsequential, yet failure is the consequence of difficulty.
This isn't even circular logic, it's a downward spiral.
Don't go insulting other people and claiming they have no logic or evidence when you very blatantly are lacking it completely yourself.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Voting for Trump is not wrong. There are reasons why people do even if I can't stand the man. Again you talk too much in absolutes and your opinion makes it right. And RNG games have sold millions.
That being said, you already kind of do "fail" sometimes on raiding. Some guilds stall out on certain encounters and those sort of gate them there. I would think some quests that you could fail and not do again would be cool as long as you got the story and lore behind them regardless and it didn't really nail you as far as gear goes (would suck to fail a quest that had a best in slot item in it or something). But take all of this with a grain of salt. I am a fan of old school EQ, where you could lose all of your gear, where you could lose levels, where getting your gear back was an adventure all its own and healers were pretty much required so they can give you rezzes so you don't lose more than 4% exp. Thus why I cannot wait for Pantheon, and it will have a system in it (perception) that will kind of be like that I guess. If your perception isn't high enough, you might miss quests.
You can have systems like crafting where you need to try a lot to finally succeed but that's about it. If you are going to tie these into the P2W part of the game like in BDO then that element of crafting is key to your characters PvP strength.
But outside of that games are like a ride on a roller coaster, it looks dangerous but never is.
I mean, you quoted a comment from May 2016.