What is combat about, in your game?
Is it just aiming to be a
simulation of combat in real life? Well in real life it's kind of a hack
fest until one drops - the reason that's exciting, or even just plain
frightening, is perma death.
If combat in your game is about
'wanting to win' more than it's about simulation, then what do you win
from combat? Basically it's an easy formula - the more you stand to win,
the bigger the excitement.
The formula continues that the longer
it takes to get there (ie, were waiting for hit points to go down), the
more the excitement is reduced. I'd really recommend having a chance on
each attack of one shotting the other warrior. Because instead of going
"oh, I did 5 damage...and he's got 95 to go...well, what's the point of
watching in the next few seconds to a minute? Nothings going to happen"
they watch in anticipation because at any point one guy could be dropped
instantly.
But again, the excitement is a multiplier of the potential reward.
Which
is generally an issue to online game designers, because they want to
spread out rewards over a long period of time. Sadly, even in big name
mmorpg, the designers seem to have gone 'Oh, just in case someone grinds
for eight hours each day, we'll make all the rewards really, really damn
small'. Which sucks and is lame design. At the very least you could
simply have someone have X number of chances per day of a big reward,
thus the grinder does not break the reward spread AND you don't have to
make the rewards pathetic - they can be substantial.
Anyway, for a
long time I concentrated on how to make combat options that were
exciting. But after a long time I came to the conclusion it was like
flogging a dead horse. All the combat options in the world doesn't make
combat exciting if the reward is pathetic.
~~~
I originally posted this over at indie resource in reply to another poster. But it warrants it's own post here, as well.
Showing posts with label risk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label risk. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
AD&D idea: Long term damage.
I look at combat in AD&D now, at the level ~5 range and...I run into the problem I've talked about before. You cannot include a statistical chance of death, without instigating a certain death sentence. But without a chance of death, the thrill that you get at level one ("OMG am I gunna die!!?!?!") is absent.
I'm considering this idea now were at higher levels: Saying that various monsters attacks are so vicious that for some of them, if they drop you to the negatives you suffer a long term loss in the maximum number of hit points you have. When you go down, you make a system shock save. If you pass, you lose 5 hitpoints off your max, for this session and one future game session. If you fail, it's for this session and two future game sessions. You can gain this penalty twice and the HP penalty stacks, but no more than that.
The reason I say game sessions instead of just weeks is because if at the start of the session the players just go 'oh, we sit around in the tavern for two weeks - there, effects gone! Then we adventure!' it sucks. It's the most weak ass way of avoiding consequences - it's just a free get out of jail card. That sort of stuff is for pure simulationists who don't care if the game is challenging for players (they only care about playing out a world, no matter how easy or hard that makes gameplay).
So the idea is that it will definately affect future sessions. It may even bring about your demise! But since it doesn't kill you in itself, it gives some wiggle room for the players to avoid death (so it's not just a statistical implementation of a death chance).
Possibly at levels 10 to 15 it might become a 10 hit point penalty. 16 to 20, a 20 hitpoint penalty.
I'm considering this idea now were at higher levels: Saying that various monsters attacks are so vicious that for some of them, if they drop you to the negatives you suffer a long term loss in the maximum number of hit points you have. When you go down, you make a system shock save. If you pass, you lose 5 hitpoints off your max, for this session and one future game session. If you fail, it's for this session and two future game sessions. You can gain this penalty twice and the HP penalty stacks, but no more than that.
The reason I say game sessions instead of just weeks is because if at the start of the session the players just go 'oh, we sit around in the tavern for two weeks - there, effects gone! Then we adventure!' it sucks. It's the most weak ass way of avoiding consequences - it's just a free get out of jail card. That sort of stuff is for pure simulationists who don't care if the game is challenging for players (they only care about playing out a world, no matter how easy or hard that makes gameplay).
So the idea is that it will definately affect future sessions. It may even bring about your demise! But since it doesn't kill you in itself, it gives some wiggle room for the players to avoid death (so it's not just a statistical implementation of a death chance).
Possibly at levels 10 to 15 it might become a 10 hit point penalty. 16 to 20, a 20 hitpoint penalty.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
More reward for higher difficulty is...rubbish?
Might be wrong, but I think that's been pushed in game design (particularly around the mmorpg area) that more difficulty of play aught to equal more reward.
The thing is more reward for more 'difficulty' (where that difficulty is just higher enemy stats) can even be easier than before. Say instead the monster that would normally inflict on average 10 damage over a fight to your 30 hit points and give 100 gold, inflicts 20 points on average and gives 200 gold. You can then go and heal. Well this is easier! What's the difference between healing off the damage? None and you got more gold? It's just easier than before! The only thing that could change that is a spike in damage (and dice pools tend to average out).
If reward actually tracked to higher difficulty perfectly, then unless there is spiking damage, there is no point, it would always be effectively the exact same difficulty as before, but with higher numbers (though it would cut down on grind, granted!).
Difficulty has to always be incommensurate to reward otherwise difficulty has not been raised. The only reward higher difficulty can really impart and still be higher difficulty, is the knowledge you did it on a harder difficulty.
The thing is more reward for more 'difficulty' (where that difficulty is just higher enemy stats) can even be easier than before. Say instead the monster that would normally inflict on average 10 damage over a fight to your 30 hit points and give 100 gold, inflicts 20 points on average and gives 200 gold. You can then go and heal. Well this is easier! What's the difference between healing off the damage? None and you got more gold? It's just easier than before! The only thing that could change that is a spike in damage (and dice pools tend to average out).
If reward actually tracked to higher difficulty perfectly, then unless there is spiking damage, there is no point, it would always be effectively the exact same difficulty as before, but with higher numbers (though it would cut down on grind, granted!).
Difficulty has to always be incommensurate to reward otherwise difficulty has not been raised. The only reward higher difficulty can really impart and still be higher difficulty, is the knowledge you did it on a harder difficulty.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Yet another TPK dysfunction: Death Illusionists
I was reading Zak's blog and wrote an overly long reply, which I think warrants repeating on my own blog (dang I hate how I tend to be more inspired to write in responce to people rather than simply writing when I decide to) .
I'll quote a sample of the guy Zak was talking to/about. And I'll highlight the important part.
The guy wants complete control over whether a TPK happens, which is to say he wants to make sure a TPK does not happen.
You can actually see the contrast in Zak's post
You can see the difference between "without" and "might". But even Zak's "might" is problematic.
So, here's my comment:
You do know this guy is trying for the illusion of death/a TPK, by having a system which is so fined tuned it appears your going to die, but actually it's so fined tuned you wont. He just can't admit that, he has to say "I want to better gauge the results". And why does he need to better gauge them/know them in advance? So he can pick the one where the group doesn't die.
It's a recurring phenomena in gamers. I've had this chat with a friend of mine where he was doing everything to stop a PC from dying, yet when I suggested we just acknowledge PC's can't die, just defeated, he couldn't stomach it. And here's a link to another, with the guy quoted. He has a million reasons why killing PC's sucks, yet he can't get that that means PC's will never die (the system certainly wont force him to kill a PC - so if he hates killing PC's, when are PC's ever going to die? Never. But he couldn't admit that).
Not that your own approach isn't potentially problematic
Sure they sometimes steamroll or get TPK'd (maybe 10% of the time)
So let's say a TPK happens 5% of the time. So after, on average, twenty fights the whole party dies and everyone makes new characters? Predictably? So you'd never really make double digit levels, let alone top level. That kind of conflicts with the high levels. Which if your cool with that, okay.
Or does TPK mean one guy actually gets away and arranges some recover or resurrection? Or even if no one gets away, res's can still occur? In these cases the K in TPK stands more for Knock Out than kill. TPKO.
The death thing is a problematic issue (which leads to gamers like the linked guy, who can't admit they are attempting to have the illusion of being able to die, while fiercely demanding rules which will avoid death occuring (always by an apparent skin of the PC's teeth though (though on serious analysis, its not at all skin of the teeth)) or you just get a TPK predictably after X amount of combats. It doesn't matter if it's a 1% chance of TPK, if you do around 100 combats, you eventually die.
I'll quote a sample of the guy Zak was talking to/about. And I'll highlight the important part.
THe way I see it is, I want to have maximum control over the encounter difficulty so that when my party fights a BBEG or other major battle, I can be reasonably sure that they're not going to end up steamrolling it or being TPK'd unexpectedly. In my experience that's not really fun for the players or the DM. To me a lot of the drama from combat is sometimes coming down to the wire. Who is going to win? I want to be able to play my NPCs and monsters to their fullest without either wiping the party or being slaughtered, unless of course that's the purpose of the encounter.
The guy wants complete control over whether a TPK happens, which is to say he wants to make sure a TPK does not happen.
You can actually see the contrast in Zak's post
Zak S - Exactly! I want to be able to play my monsters and NPCs to the fullest knowing It MIGHT lead to a TPK!
You can see the difference between "without" and "might". But even Zak's "might" is problematic.
So, here's my comment:
You do know this guy is trying for the illusion of death/a TPK, by having a system which is so fined tuned it appears your going to die, but actually it's so fined tuned you wont. He just can't admit that, he has to say "I want to better gauge the results". And why does he need to better gauge them/know them in advance? So he can pick the one where the group doesn't die.
It's a recurring phenomena in gamers. I've had this chat with a friend of mine where he was doing everything to stop a PC from dying, yet when I suggested we just acknowledge PC's can't die, just defeated, he couldn't stomach it. And here's a link to another, with the guy quoted. He has a million reasons why killing PC's sucks, yet he can't get that that means PC's will never die (the system certainly wont force him to kill a PC - so if he hates killing PC's, when are PC's ever going to die? Never. But he couldn't admit that).
Not that your own approach isn't potentially problematic
Sure they sometimes steamroll or get TPK'd (maybe 10% of the time)
So let's say a TPK happens 5% of the time. So after, on average, twenty fights the whole party dies and everyone makes new characters? Predictably? So you'd never really make double digit levels, let alone top level. That kind of conflicts with the high levels. Which if your cool with that, okay.
Or does TPK mean one guy actually gets away and arranges some recover or resurrection? Or even if no one gets away, res's can still occur? In these cases the K in TPK stands more for Knock Out than kill. TPKO.
The death thing is a problematic issue (which leads to gamers like the linked guy, who can't admit they are attempting to have the illusion of being able to die, while fiercely demanding rules which will avoid death occuring (always by an apparent skin of the PC's teeth though (though on serious analysis, its not at all skin of the teeth)) or you just get a TPK predictably after X amount of combats. It doesn't matter if it's a 1% chance of TPK, if you do around 100 combats, you eventually die.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Challenge: Can you NOT win?
Tesh put forth the hypothesis that you can have challenge without risk - risk is like a seperate thing, like oxygen is seperate from hydrogen (...though you can't have water without it...).
So, talk or perhaps make a game and let that do the walking for me!? Introducing proof of (bad) concept!
The bullets, they head toward a ship you can move around. What will you do? If you don't happen to do anything, does it matter at all?
Can you win? Can you not win?
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Do you really want challenge?
I'm still wondering about that since a discussion at MMO crunch.
For example, say there's a zone rich in nodes and treasure chests - and the company has an employee called Gus who patrols around a monster NPC to attack players. Let's say he has around 20% chance of finding you, usually.
BUT the company tells the employee hey, if you wanna take bio breaks or just watch some TV or talk on the phone with your girlfriend, that's fine.
At those times he's not going to catch you at all, of course.
Now, is that satisfying? Is that really facing any sort of risk? Because that's what the majority of PVP is in most mmorpgs. The enemy might just be entirely absent.
There was no risk. Are you into facing risk, or do you just like to give the impression you are but your really happy to actually be in any situation where Gus is absent, so your just collecting treasure in the face of no real risk - but because you don't know that's how it is, you can say to everyone you did face risk?
Are you actually happy for Gus to be on the can?
If not, to me, your not into risk. Your just into the impression or illusion of risk.
For example, say there's a zone rich in nodes and treasure chests - and the company has an employee called Gus who patrols around a monster NPC to attack players. Let's say he has around 20% chance of finding you, usually.
BUT the company tells the employee hey, if you wanna take bio breaks or just watch some TV or talk on the phone with your girlfriend, that's fine.
At those times he's not going to catch you at all, of course.
Now, is that satisfying? Is that really facing any sort of risk? Because that's what the majority of PVP is in most mmorpgs. The enemy might just be entirely absent.
There was no risk. Are you into facing risk, or do you just like to give the impression you are but your really happy to actually be in any situation where Gus is absent, so your just collecting treasure in the face of no real risk - but because you don't know that's how it is, you can say to everyone you did face risk?
Are you actually happy for Gus to be on the can?
If not, to me, your not into risk. Your just into the impression or illusion of risk.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Darkfall - the missing link between themepark and eventual play to win mmorpgs
You know what's dreadful? I don't happen to think of any content at all for this blog...then I'll find someone elses thread and respond with what I thought would be a two sentence thing...and it's blog entry sized in the end. This is responding to an article on mmocrunch about risk, again.
I think darkfall is evolving toward a play to win mmorpg, but it's still in an amphibian state - it's moved on from being a fish, but it's not a mammal yet, either.
The risk system, which perhaps seems shocking and exciting at first, isn't fun from moment to moment once you start seeing the overlaying structure.
Take this example: If you went out with 200 gold on you, your risking 200 gold. Now say you come back to base with 200 gold...does that sound exciting? No, it sounds like risk for absolutely no benefit at all. Now with darkfall, imagine leaving home base with 150 gold, then finding 50 gold? Great? No. Because you don't have that gold yet - you could lose it all on the way home. It's actually the same as the 200 gold example - you haven't won anything, your just risking more and more and more stuff for no benefit at all.
Now granted if you get back to base and bank it all, then you've won that money. But it's going to be half an hour to an hour before that happens. That is not moment to moment fun. It might feel like it when you find a chest full of gold, but once you see the bigger structure, you see that chest isn't any fun at all. Only getting back to the bank with it all is, and that's not happening any time soon.
Sure if you like delayed fun, it's okay. But that's why I call it an amphibian or reptile - it's not warmblooded yet. It has to laze around in the son for ages before it really gets going.
`
I'd suggest just having an ante - an amount a player has to fill with a certain amount of gold, or equipment equivalent to a certain amount of gold. This ante and only this ante is lost upon being killed. So if you do find 100 more gold, it really is a win right here, right now, because you can't lose any more than the fixed ante from before.
Also I wish I could figure out how to put captions under the pictures so I could write "It's only a flesh wound" in the pic above!
Edit: I think success with the caption! Found out how to do it!
I think darkfall is evolving toward a play to win mmorpg, but it's still in an amphibian state - it's moved on from being a fish, but it's not a mammal yet, either.
The risk system, which perhaps seems shocking and exciting at first, isn't fun from moment to moment once you start seeing the overlaying structure.
Take this example: If you went out with 200 gold on you, your risking 200 gold. Now say you come back to base with 200 gold...does that sound exciting? No, it sounds like risk for absolutely no benefit at all. Now with darkfall, imagine leaving home base with 150 gold, then finding 50 gold? Great? No. Because you don't have that gold yet - you could lose it all on the way home. It's actually the same as the 200 gold example - you haven't won anything, your just risking more and more and more stuff for no benefit at all.
Now granted if you get back to base and bank it all, then you've won that money. But it's going to be half an hour to an hour before that happens. That is not moment to moment fun. It might feel like it when you find a chest full of gold, but once you see the bigger structure, you see that chest isn't any fun at all. Only getting back to the bank with it all is, and that's not happening any time soon.
Sure if you like delayed fun, it's okay. But that's why I call it an amphibian or reptile - it's not warmblooded yet. It has to laze around in the son for ages before it really gets going.
`
I'd suggest just having an ante - an amount a player has to fill with a certain amount of gold, or equipment equivalent to a certain amount of gold. This ante and only this ante is lost upon being killed. So if you do find 100 more gold, it really is a win right here, right now, because you can't lose any more than the fixed ante from before.
Also I wish I could figure out how to put captions under the pictures so I could write "It's only a flesh wound" in the pic above!
Edit: I think success with the caption! Found out how to do it!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Logged in - but as what? Free will or machine?
On mmocrunch, cmagoun posted this article, which quoted me.
It's a question on risk - cmagoun started using a different definition of risk. I'll use it in the sense of it meaning chance of danger.
Now, what happens if you think there's danger in say, crossing a section of eve space, or even crossing a zone in PVP world of warcraft? But even though you think there's danger, all the gankers are actually on bio break, or they are asleep, or their girlfriend got frisky (okay, I guess the GF part is pretty unrealistic...hehe).
Well, did you face a risk?
Perhaps in some sort of butterfly effect, chaos theory way you did? Because all the real world factors, including the players own will and deciding if they log in, that might determine whether they are on at the moment you cross that sector. And facing all that, that counts as risk, right?
I might actually agree with that, except for the human will part.
I mean, if you start treating a persons decision to log in (or not log in) not as a human choice, but simply as a statistical obstacle to overcome...well, is this how social connection between people works?
That's starting to treat someone like a vending machine - like calculating the odds of them vending a certain result then fist pumping the air if the 'logged out' result is vended.
I prefer to think of peoples free will as a sort of gentle mystery - and thus it's not at all facing risk to face whether they are logged on or not. That's simply human choice.
Now I grant, it's totally possible to treat people as a type of vending machine - there is nothing that says one has to always just paint peoples free will as a mystery. You can instead treat it as a biomechanical machine - just a pile of drifting, wet, carbon based mud. Sometimes you have to cut the crap and see the truth of 'humanity' underneath. BUT NOT FOR A GAME! Surely? For just a freaking risk thrill? Surely not?
Treating someones free will as just a set of statistical odds is treating that person as a machine (and oh, there's truth in that, but lets not get into that truth simply for a mmorpgs sake, surely?).
And if you don't treat their free will as a set of statistical odds, it's simply not risk taking to face off whether they are logged in or on bio break. No risk taking is happening.
For more on the idea of free will, see my other post.
It's a question on risk - cmagoun started using a different definition of risk. I'll use it in the sense of it meaning chance of danger.
Now, what happens if you think there's danger in say, crossing a section of eve space, or even crossing a zone in PVP world of warcraft? But even though you think there's danger, all the gankers are actually on bio break, or they are asleep, or their girlfriend got frisky (okay, I guess the GF part is pretty unrealistic...hehe).
Well, did you face a risk?
Perhaps in some sort of butterfly effect, chaos theory way you did? Because all the real world factors, including the players own will and deciding if they log in, that might determine whether they are on at the moment you cross that sector. And facing all that, that counts as risk, right?
I might actually agree with that, except for the human will part.
I mean, if you start treating a persons decision to log in (or not log in) not as a human choice, but simply as a statistical obstacle to overcome...well, is this how social connection between people works?
That's starting to treat someone like a vending machine - like calculating the odds of them vending a certain result then fist pumping the air if the 'logged out' result is vended.
I prefer to think of peoples free will as a sort of gentle mystery - and thus it's not at all facing risk to face whether they are logged on or not. That's simply human choice.
Now I grant, it's totally possible to treat people as a type of vending machine - there is nothing that says one has to always just paint peoples free will as a mystery. You can instead treat it as a biomechanical machine - just a pile of drifting, wet, carbon based mud. Sometimes you have to cut the crap and see the truth of 'humanity' underneath. BUT NOT FOR A GAME! Surely? For just a freaking risk thrill? Surely not?
Treating someones free will as just a set of statistical odds is treating that person as a machine (and oh, there's truth in that, but lets not get into that truth simply for a mmorpgs sake, surely?).
And if you don't treat their free will as a set of statistical odds, it's simply not risk taking to face off whether they are logged in or on bio break. No risk taking is happening.
For more on the idea of free will, see my other post.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Risk #2, Transparency
Even more comments along from my last post and last time at mmocrunch.
I'll quote
I'll quote
Unfortunately Hulkageddon 1 and 2 has made safe mining impossible even in empire space. Since Apocrypha and the introduction of wormhole space, you can get that 0.0 feel and profitablility without venturing past gatecamps getting to null or lowsec. They even have wormholes that lead to 0.0 and that enables the term: Stealth mining. But that requires a few hulks and an orca. HUGE RISK! But tremendous reward if you pull it off.My responce
But EVE is not for everyone, but gets the risk/reward ratio right.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Risk in mmorpgs
There's a good article about risk in mmorpgs on mmocrunch at the moment.
However, while it lays into the often zero risk nature of mmorpgs, they felt EVE made sense. Here's what I had to say:
As far as I'm aware, in terms of risk Eve suffers or fails in that in more dangerous space you have no idea of the risk (you have some idea in poker, for example) since people who will kill you aren't regulated in any way. Is it thrilling when there was a zero change of being ganked, cause all the local gankers were on bio break?
Well I guess that raises the question that if you don't know you couldn't die, but you felt as if you could and that was exciting, whether it the truth of the situation or the feeling of the situation that matters. Personally I'd go with the truth.
Second is that as far as I understand it, it's risking $100 to gain $1. For example, in more dangerous space, will one instance of mining pay twice the value of your ship and it's mods/your guys mods? I'm thinking no, it'll only pay a fraction.
In poker you don't risk $100 to gain $1. You usually risk a certain amount to win multiple times that amount.
I think even if you like risking $100 to gain $1, it'll make you risk adverse and when you do lose, it'll really, really suck. Atleast in poker you can say "Well, I lost $10 but I could have won $100!" while here it's "Well, I lost $100 but I could have won $1...AH CRAP!"
However, while it lays into the often zero risk nature of mmorpgs, they felt EVE made sense. Here's what I had to say:
As far as I'm aware, in terms of risk Eve suffers or fails in that in more dangerous space you have no idea of the risk (you have some idea in poker, for example) since people who will kill you aren't regulated in any way. Is it thrilling when there was a zero change of being ganked, cause all the local gankers were on bio break?
Well I guess that raises the question that if you don't know you couldn't die, but you felt as if you could and that was exciting, whether it the truth of the situation or the feeling of the situation that matters. Personally I'd go with the truth.
Second is that as far as I understand it, it's risking $100 to gain $1. For example, in more dangerous space, will one instance of mining pay twice the value of your ship and it's mods/your guys mods? I'm thinking no, it'll only pay a fraction.
In poker you don't risk $100 to gain $1. You usually risk a certain amount to win multiple times that amount.
I think even if you like risking $100 to gain $1, it'll make you risk adverse and when you do lose, it'll really, really suck. Atleast in poker you can say "Well, I lost $10 but I could have won $100!" while here it's "Well, I lost $100 but I could have won $1...AH CRAP!"
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