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[Zomg]

The Codex death mechanics discussion (or more generally, the failure mechanics discussion) is pretty ubiquitous.

I personally think the Fire Emblem/Darklands/Jagged Alliance/Baldur's Gate (in the case of character destroying overkill and disintegration) small-unit tactics death systems are weak. They just encourage total caution, usually without any relevant mechanic encouraging haste (like, for example, the hunger mechanics in Nethack that encourage you to dive faster rather than stick around safe depths scumming levels and equipment), and they have to be balanced around the idea that you will completely dominate the AI and not lose a single character outside of rare and special engagements. It leads to extremely ritualized, crappy gameplay where no engagement ever asks you to take some kind of risky masterstroke to win, but instead to just gingerly plod around. I can't remember if it was Gambler or Crichton that made me realize this, but it was one of 'em (or both?)

Now, in reality it's not as though the philosophically no-death games like KotOR or NWN2 actually make anything of the mechanic, but rather just have the same oafish combat and balance except now easier and less coherent. It wasn't implemented for gameplay reasons.

 

[galsiah]

I think the problem with death in RPGs is more to do with reloading in general than anything else.

Sure, but (as I've said many times before), the solution to this is to make the consequences of failure entertaining, both in the short and the long term. Saying to the player "You can reload, but you'll be horribly bored if you do." is hardly a satisfactory situation.

The aim shouldn't be to make the reloading situation unattractive (half an hour of boredom...), but to make the non-reloading situation attractive - i.e. entertaining.

It's silly to complain about reloading when designers put zero effort into making failure interesting (again, see X-Com for an example of this done well). Making reloading inconvenient just hides the problem by making it the lesser of two evils. It doesn't solve it.

Also, there is a difference between the "going back in time" of save-reloading, and the invulnerability of characters without permanent death. Going back in time is an absurdity which occurs outside the game world - it makes the player's experience somewhat absurd, but not the game world. Lack of permanent death (or of "death" with significant consequences) makes the game world itself absurd. This is worse.

 

[Monolith]

Make combat avoidable and all in all less gainful. *Not* the only driving force behind the story. *And* a character's choice.

I don't like the concept of combat which is found in nearly every RPG. Combat is deadly. If not, it's at least dangerous as fuck - especially if weapons are involved. If my character knows that fighting multiple powerful enemies is involved in accepting a quest, I want him to be able to reject - with or without *my* (the players) interference. Make such choices depending on stats. Courage, perception, intelligence etc. or ingame knowledge.

I mean...come on. My NWN 2 char is fighting dozens of bandits who are armed to the teeth and bloodthirsty and what not and he just decides to take them out for what, a couple of gold coins? Only because he knows that quickload will safe his ass. Otherwise it's utter bullshit and illogical, unrealistic and...yeah, fucked up.

Sure, saying that is easy and no, I still haven't worked out a working the needed working game mechanics for such a combat concept. But that doesn't mean it's not possible, does it?

 

[sabishii]

I think the problem with death in RPGs is more to do with reloading in general than anything else.

Sure, but (as I've said many times before), the solution to this is to make the consequences of failure entertaining, both in the short and the long term. Saying to the player "You can reload, but you'll be horribly bored if you do." is hardly a satisfactory situation.

True, it's better if a death still leads to "entertaining" gameplay... But I don't think it's altogether necessary. Sometimes a failure is just a failure. Just like failing a quest - You don't reload (hopefully) just because you fail a quest. You fail to kill the enemy before he kills the person you're trying to save. And so you lose the reward and don't get any extra "entertainment." Oh well. I wouldn't reload in this situation. Sure, I don't get any extra "entertainment" value by failing, and I may even be missing out on further quests that this victim may have given me, but I'm still not going to reload. The failure is part of my character's history now and helps define my character, even if there's no extra gameplay.

I don't get why a character's death = reload. I'm only annoyed or frustrated by deaths when I'm THIS close to reaching the end boss of a dungeon and the loss of manpower would equal way too much of an increase in difficulty. Then I may or may not reload. But in normal gameplay, e.g. exploring areas or doing side quests, I don't see why someone would be annoyed by a death. Oh no, Keldorn died. So replace him. If that's not possible, work up the money to pay a temple for a resurrection. If even that's not possible, then tough it out - chances are, each party member gets more experience with a smaller party.

Again, I'm not saying that it's bad to having an "entertaining" consequence for failures such as death, but rather that it's not fully necessary. Sometimes a failure is just a failure and you have to live with it.

 

[galsiah]

...Just like failing a quest - You don't reload (hopefully) just because you fail a quest...

Failing a quest should be entertaining too. (I don't necessarily mean "fun" - it could be challenging/sad/tense/horrifying... - just not boring).

Unless a designer means for every player to succeed at a challenge (unlikely), then failure is an outcome he's expecting for a reasonable proportion of players. Not providing them with entertainment (in some form) is less-than-perfect design.

Importantly, knowing that failure will be entertaining (if it were), is not going to make most players any less keen to succeed. So long as success is reasonably entertaining too, players will do their best simply because they want to succeed - and because they want to do the best they can for their party. Also, the entertainment provided for failure can be more of a downer than that for success. Again - it doesn't have to be fun/happy... - just an enriching experience.

Failure at the moment is usually just dull. There's no excuse for that (where a reasonable number of players are expected to fail).

...And so you lose the reward and don't get any extra "entertainment."...

I'm not sure you're saying "[party] reward = [player] entertainment" here. If you are, that's wrong. A punishment for the party, and a setback for the player can still be entertaining. I'm certainly not against setbacks - I'm just against dull setbacks. [here I don't mean "not exciting" with "dull" - things needn't be high-energy all the time, but they need to have some impact beyond boredom]

...Sure, I don't get any extra "entertainment" value by failing...

But you should - more than none that is. Both success and failure should always be entertaining unless everyone is expected to succeed. Clearly a designer needs to provide incentives for success, and disincentives for failure - but these should be for the party, not the player. There is never a reason to intentionally stop entertaining the player.

The failure is part of my character's history now and helps define my character, even if there's no extra gameplay.

Then that's some small measure of entertainment (not enough IMO, but something). I think failure usually should provide extra gameplay, but that's not a fundamental principle. Entertainment is.
Thou shalt not be dull.

I don't get why a character's death = reload.... Oh no, Keldorn died. So replace him. If that's not possible, work up the money to pay a temple for a resurrection. If even that's not possible, then tough it out - chances are, each party member gets more experience with a smaller party.

The point is the implications for the story / player experience - not for the power of the party (though often reloads are assumed, so not reloading upsets balance).
Of course death means nothing if a party member can simply be replaced with little consequence. This wasn't even true in X-Com - in many RPGs, it might be less true. As for resurrection, it's just tacky. If the game includes resurrection, it doesn't include permadeath by definition: death is not permanent.

Even in a game with resurrection, however, death should not be dull. If it is, it's a wasted opportunity. Whether or not its being dull makes you reload is not the point - the point is that you'd have a more entertaining experience if it weren't dull. The aim isn't to get barely adequate design - it's to get great design. There's no reason to stop at "just entertaining enough for you not to reload".

Again, I'm not saying that it's bad to having an "entertaining" consequence for failures such as death, but rather that it's not fully necessary. Sometimes a failure is just a failure and you have to live with it.

Sure, but I mean it in a broader sense. It doesn't have to be fun/happy - it can lead to horrific consequences. Rather than just living with it, the player can spend much of the rest of the game dealing with the consequences - whether that means taking action to right a wrong; coming to terms with the horror he's inflicted in the face of widespread evidence; turning into someone he'd rather not be, since it now seems the only way forward...

There's no more excuse for failure being dull than for success being dull. Clearly it's not practical (or even desirable) to have far-reaching consequences for every success/failure. However, (near)death really ought to be a big deal with significant implications. If it doesn't have a large story impact, it should at least have significant gameplay implications.

 

[Human Shield]

I think permadeath for NPCs should work off a destiny system. The NPCs are scripted, or generated, a destiny either in a Bioware type story or a sandbox game that they will die for a certain reason (protect someone, save the group, killed by their brother, betrays the group, etc...). Then when it comes up after the player is attached to the NPC, they face it eventually and will die. I think a way to advert it would be the player spending his own character's points (would have to be valuable), this gives the player a moral dilema.

Besides that death works like other games and just encourages the standard reload and try another approach if you want.

This means that NPC deaths will always be meaningful and avoids the reloading mess.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Naked Ninja wrote:
The only danger anyone experiences in these games is the danger of experiencing a set back. They're not going to die, you are just going to reload.


That is a choice, and it should remain a choice. Forcing something on players because "everyone will reload" anyway is as lame as not designing xbows and throwing weapons because "let's face it, everyone uses bows!".

No, it isn't the same. It would be the same if in fact 99% of the player base used bows, but that was just a marketing-lie. How can I make my ninja if the game doesn't include shuriken and smoke grenades? 99% of people however do reload. I noticed in those Age of Decadence shots when your character dies it shows a promt about loading a save game. Why force that annoying pop-up screen, you should consider the people who are going to play your game in Iron Man mode, who will just start over, and send them back to the main screen. Right? Wrong. Providing the convenience because most of your players will appreciate it, thats just good design.

Come on now. I've never played an RPG where one of my party members have died in a cave and I've just left it like that. If I cant resurrect I'll reload. Experiencing their comments/storyline/side quests is why I have them along, not for some sort of wierd pleasure of watching them peg it. I play role-playing games to enjoy role-playing primarily, not for strategic decision making. Even if their death provides an interesting "strategic scenario", its more than offset by the loss of future role-playing that having them along provides. Unless you get to role-play them wandering around in the afterlife and interacting with ghosts or something. Its just not worth it for me, and most people. Thus, reload.

There is a good reason why "iron man" is a popular choice and an often requested feature.

You're going to have to provide some stats with that nonsense, because I don't believe the figure would be close to even 1% (well, maybe in an action RPG). Prove it.

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And why do you think having a planned set encounter means you have no input? Thats where branching comes in. All of planescapes encounters were carefully planned and scripted. Did you have no chance to roleplay? Come now, apply your own logic to your experience playing that game, and see the falsehood of your hypothesis.


Prove it.

I thought I just did. Planescape torment. No perma-death, yet plenty of role-playing. Did you feel like you were just passively watching cut-scenes unfold? I didn't. So there goes the hypothesis that no perma-death = just watching cut-scenes without any real roleplaying.

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About the stats, again, you seem to believe a scripted, set-up encounter means that it always turns out the same way. I've already gone over that above, so I'm not going to repeat myself here.


Cop-out

No, laziness. Just read what I read before, it applies to that point as well. Save me the effort of typing up the same damn thing twice, would you please?

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As to the last paragraph, while I like to see options like that in games, you can only take that so far, especially if you can't guarantee where and when it happens.


Is that a fact?

Yes. I've never seen generated content that matched a good script, in terms of great role-playing and storyline. If Age of Decadence pulls it off, I will congratulate you and concede the point, but until then, I hold that human created scripts trump any sort of "personal storyline" you generate just by wandering around and interacting with a sandbox world. I'm not saying the gameplay is better, but the storyline and roleplaying is better and deeper, the characters more memorable. It is however less replayable. I like sandbox for its ability to keep me entertained when I just want to fuck around in the game setting, but a good story grips me and holds me until I'm done with the plot.

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Generated content can't match handcrafted stuff...


Daggerfall vs MW/OB.

Ahaha, ok you've got me there. Let me rephrase. Generated content can't match *good* handcrafted stuff. You can't hold up MW/Oblivion as a good example of handcrafted plots, any more than you could a MMOG. They are extremely passive/background, necessitated by the goal of open-ended gameplay. Compare it to an active plot like in BG2. Admittedly, I wasn't fortunate enough to play much daggerfall (I would have liked to), but from what I hear the quests are extremely cookie-cutter for the most part.

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If a player figures out that putting on the ring triggers event X, they'll just sit around in the tavern putting it on and taking it off until Boromir triggers and they get the payoff. There goes your nice pacing.


It's a choice, isn't it?

That it may be, but its only availabe because your game designer didn't think of the possiblity/you game system is flawed. Other examples of stupid choices would be putting the most powerful weapon in the game in the first room. The player has a "choice" whether to use it or not, but just being "a choice" doesn't make it positive. Good design takes precedance over even giving the player choices.

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Computers can't match a good writers sense of timing, effect, setting etc. Computers couldn't generate a plot like PS:Ts through juggling stats and numbers. A good story is a work of art.


So is a good RPG.

Well, we agree on that at least.

 

[Naked Ninja]

I've broken this post into 2 because they are each quite long. Please don't ask me to learn about the edit button

@Galsiah

I especially loved this line :

The more "death" penalizes the party, the more important it'll feel to the player.

Yes. Very important. In a bad way. As in, something to be avoided. You know, like in real life. Death is pretty non-trivial in real life too, yet people strive their utmost to avoid it, wierd huh? If they could hit reload, just about everyone would. No matter how holistic the experience.


Face it. Death in an RPG is a hugely negative experience (They can't all be stories about immortals like in PS:T). Its supposed to be. You lose the "potential" of that character, whether its combat resources, backstory, or future interactions. Unless such a death invokes a storyline branch, simply experiencing the death doesn't compansate for the role-playing fun you lose out on (except if roleplaying mourning is your thing). So almost everyone reloads or if they can resurrects.

Naked Ninja wrote:
A main character dying under the attacks of some random goblin...

Which wouldn't happen. Are you reading? (and do stop with the "random" - it's getting tiresome).

It wouldn't? You guys keep talking about mid-level characters and goblins, but thats missing the point completly. I'm talking about the arb generic guys you fight, appropriate for your level. If its a low level char : goblin/orc. If its a mid level character, substitute a troll or giant or something. There is always the main enemies, usually named, and a huge bunch of generic nameless fodder. Often, unrelated to the main plot. Like, they are random. You know, you go exploring a cave and there is trolls in there. Why? Who knows. Random. And yes, if the enemy is appropriate for your level or higher, you CAN die from these enemies. Stop saying it wouldn't happen, it can and does. Thats what you lot complained about in Oblivion right, that the auto-leveling thing meant you couldn't encounter dangerous random monsters simply by wandering around? Stop being inconsistent.

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An example. In BG2....

This can be done with permadeath. You just won't get to see all such "emotional" content on your first playthrough. Hence my suggestion that this would need to work for a shorter game with replay value a major selling point.

If thats your cup of tea, great. Me, I like long, deep, involved games. With replay. And if I take a character in my party, I want to experience their content. Not wait until I play through the entire damn thing again just to see a side plot. I don't have that much spare time, sorry. If I play through again, it will be to experience different story branches and different party members.

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Compare it to Icewind Dale say, when one of your mute party members fails a saving throw or something and dies fighting Yuan-ti #22. What do you feel? Anything? Bullshit. All you feel is annoyance. That you're going to have to reload. There is no emotional weight to the characters death, plot wise. Its meaningless.

Again you use a bad implementation that makes no attempt to give character death any meaning. Again, this is no argument against a system which does make such an attempt. Again, you need to construct the best permadeath system you can imagine, then argue against that. Arguing against systems that aren't good / don't try to do what we're talking about is simply a waste of time.


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It would be the same if during the Star Wars movies

Good lord . Please stop it.

You need to argue against: the best feasible permadeath system you can imagine.
You are arguing against: bad systems, systems that don't try in this area, movies, books...
Just stop it.

Oh, so I need to imagine this super awesome system now, then start arguing against my own imagined concept? Pull the other leg, it has bells on it.

You also fail to address the issue: that a player knowing that main characters cannot possibly die makes the game dull in this regard. This isn't something you can contest with examples about books. Both solutions have their downside in games.

Really? I've never worried that I would lose my companions, life for them is but a 1-minute reload away, same as my main char, doesn't spoil it for me. All I really worry about is losing my progress up to that point. I must just be special then.

The fact that they get up in NWN2 isn't that overpowered. They get up on 1 hit point. I have to expend lots of healing (losing that potential in future encounters) or go to the next area with a seriously weakened team. Isn't that the "interesting tactical" aspect? And no, I can't just go in with them all on 1 hit point. Thats sure fire party wipe/reload. I'm actually more willing to accept the weakened state and carry on this way (which makes the next combat challenging and "interesting" ), than I would be to troop back out to a temple. Just to avoid the reload screen. I don't actually like reloading.

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Oh, and about your point about branch overlap, you are actually incorrect.

No - I'm not wrong. I said that the options you need to cater for are not doubled - since many events are independent of others. You know what that means, right?

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If they overlap it makes them HARDER to keep straight and debug.

Not with independent events. Your example assumed doubling of work for each "choice". That only occurs when every event in the game world is related - i.e. when no two events are independent. This happens only when the choice results in two entirely different worlds (i.e. practically never), or when the choice affects every other possible event in the future game (i.e. never). In short: never.


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Get a fucking clue about what you're talking about before your shoot your mouth off dumbass.

I don't suppose you'd consider taking your own advice on this one? Sticking an extra choice in a game practically never doubles the work involved. Look at almost any choice in almost any game to see this.
There are almost always extremely large parts of the game unaffected by the choice.

If "that's what you meant in the first place" (or equivalent), then note that your original point is just fairly worthless - if the doubling might only affect a very small section of the game, it's certainly not necessarily going to make things intractible.

You're going to make all the various quests involving the main plot completely independant of each other? Yeah, ok. That would be spectacular. Sorry, I like to see games where my actions have a ripple effect of consequences throught the storyline, world and characters. That kind of implies that they are intertwinned.

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The goblin example is stupid? You've never fought a horde of meaningless filler monsters in an RPG?


To argue against a feature, you must argue against the best feasible implementation of that feature.
Repeatedly digging up examples where it's not done well demonstrates nothing about the feature - only about the state of parts of the RPG market (not what we're discussing by the way).

As for PS:T, yes you could resurrect your friends right at the end. Yes, this did make the whole thing much less emotional. Yes, the effect of the end scene would have been pretty much the same without prior resurrection: so long as at least one companion survived until the end, the emotional impact of that point would work - perhaps even more so, since that character would be the one who had made it through everything else, only to be sacrificed at the last.

Resurrection has always been tacky. Allowing it at the end of PS:T was a horrilble cop-out.

Resurrection is pretty tacky. Yet mathematically, your characters dying is almost inevitable if combat is common. So how do you create a game where they make it through to the end yet death isn't a joke? Well, implementing the "badly wounded, but still barely clinging to life" mechanic is one. At least death isn't something you pop in and out of every 5 minutes. And its not that unlikely. People get hit by cars and bullets and lie there for a while, waiting for paramedics. A Toyota travelling at 60Kph isn't a cannonball, I know, but.... this is generally heroic fantasy we're talking about, they can take it like heroes and galantly cling to life.

 

[Kairal]

Galsiah I agree that reloading wouldn't be a problem in a perfectly designed game. Unfortunately however perfectly designed games are rare (well, non-existant). The truth is that if players can avoid a set-back through reloading 95% of them will. This doesn't just apply to character death but to quest resolutions as well. if a game designer wants people to accept unfavourable situations they have to remove the idiotic option to load whenever the player feels like it. Obviously it wouldn't work well in CRPGs when coupled with permadeath. However temporary stat penalties for death combined with a system that disallows convenient loading would force people to accept minor penalties.

Whether or not failure is dull is questionable. What is important is that people perceive it to be dull. It's a vicious cycle where developers never bother to make failure interesting because they're aware that the vast majority of people won't accept it. I think you first have to force people to play out disadvantageous situations and find out whether it actually is dull. Currently though it wouldn't matter if the next big CRPG has exciting consequences for failure because no-one will ever see it.

Death being inconsequential is going to make the player think "huh?" the first time and that's not a good thing. However people can generally get over it fairly quickly. Reloading on the other hand has serious implications for gameplay as well as being nonsensical, making it the greater of the two evils.

 

[galsiah]

Face it. Death in an RPG is a hugely negative experience...

For the party. It doesn't need to be for the player. Since you're so fond of book and film comparisons, notice that there are a huge amount of both which entertain without making happy stuff happen to the central characters.

You lose the "potential" of that character, whether its combat resources

Bad for the party, might be good for the player - see X-Com.

...backstory, or future interactions...

There's no reason why death can't unlock various story or future interactions. Where you have NPCs with story, it'd be quite possible to provide story in the event of their death. (yes this is more work, no it's not twice the amount for the game, yes it's possible - it'll just mean a shorter, richer game).

Unless such a death invokes a storyline branch...

Which it should for characters with story.

...simply experiencing the death doesn't compansate for the role-playing fun you lose out on...

I didn't say that "experiencing" it should. The absence of pre-written story doesn't mean there can't be entertaining gameplay consequences. Again, see X-Com. [if you haven't played it, please do so]

So almost everyone reloads

Sure they do - in the current situation. That's why I'm suggesting to change it.

I'm talking about the arb generic guys you fight, appropriate for your level.... There is always.... Like, they are random. ... Random....appropriate for your level

Are you listening?? You're describing a game like Oblivion. Oblivion is badly designed. Its design sucks. Get this through your head.

RPGs do NOT require random enemies. Where they have random enemies, they do not have to be scaled to your level (they don't even require levels).

Thats what you lot complained about in Oblivion right, that the auto-leveling thing meant you couldn't encounter dangerous random monsters simply by wandering around?

Good lord . The criticism was of the nonsense of auto-levelling enemies, which made the game world inconsistent. Nowhere have I said that this should have been replaced by "dangerous random monsters".
A designer can pace things exactly as he chooses. He can't make the odds of major character death zero, but he can make them very small.

Me, I like long, deep, involved games. With replay. And if I take a character in my party, I want to experience their content.

So you want games to be both long and deep? I can see you have a clear idea of the tradeoffs involved in development. Then you want to see everything a character has to offer on the first playthrough - yet for the game to have replay value?? Seeing everything of a character the first time through acts directly against replay value.

In any case, there's no rule that a character being alive shows you more content than that character being dead. If you'd rather not have any such branch which loses you content, then you have a game with no replay value (with respect to story).

I don't have that much spare time, sorry.

Let me get this right:
You like "long, deep" games. Yet you couldn't play a short game twice to see more content? You don't have much time, so you'd rather a game which takes a long time to come to a satisfactory conclusion, than a shorter one which gives you the option to play once or many times?

If I play through again, it will be to experience different story branches...

Like what happens when a charcter dies, for example?

Oh, so I need to imagine this super awesome system now, then start arguing against my own imagined concept?

Yes. This is called "making a logical argument". What you're doing at the moment achieves nothing.

Really? I've never worried that I would lose my companions, life for them is but a 1-minute reload away... I must just be special then.

I rather think that you are.

The fact that they get up in NWN2 isn't that overpowered.

Who talked about things being over/underpowered? Not me.

They get up on 1 hit point. I have to expend lots of healing (losing that potential in future encounters) or go to the next area with a seriously weakened team. Isn't that the "interesting tactical" aspect?

Not unless you're special.

You're missing the point in any case. Lack of death makes nonsense of the game world. If you can't see that this is a bad thing, there is little hope for you.

You're going to make all the various quests involving the main plot completely independant of each other? Yeah, ok. That would be spectacular. Sorry, I like to see games where my actions have a ripple effect of consequences throught the storyline, world and characters. That kind of implies that they are intertwinned.

Let me make this simple you.
Three possibilities:
(1) No independence between quests. [your doubling situation]
(2) Total independence between quests. [your stupid point above]
(3) Some independence between quests. [practically every game in existence]

Oddly, I'm reasoning on the basis of case (3), since practically every game past or future fits this case. You're assuming either (1) or (2), which is garbage.

Yet mathematically, your characters dying is almost inevitable if combat is common.

Since naturally a designer has no control over the odds .

So how do you create a game where they make it through to the end yet death isn't a joke?

You're assuming that their making it through to the end is the aim. It isn't.

Well, implementing the "badly wounded, but still barely clinging to life" mechanic is one. At least death isn't something you pop in and out of every 5 minutes. And its not that unlikely. People get hit by cars and bullets and lie there for a while, waiting for paramedics. A Toyota travelling at 60Kph isn't a cannonball, I know, but.... this is generally heroic fantasy we're talking about, they can take it like heroes and galantly cling to life.

Yes - this is a possibility (not as good as supporting true death IMO, but a possibility nonetheless). However, to do this and maintain credibility means making sure that this situation is very rare. That means giving it serious medium-term consequences.
Game mechanics should incentivize the player to avoid "death" pretty much as he would avoid death. If he's not doing this, the design isn't great.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Lol, ok, now I'm just bored arguing with your nonsense. Lay off the crack guy.

You're assuming that their making it through to the end is the aim. It isn't.

I bow to your superior thinking.

 

[suibhne]

I bow to your superior thinking.

As well you should.

 

[Kraszu]

That it may be, but its only availabe because your game designer didn't think of the possiblity/you game system is flawed. Other examples of stupid choices would be putting the most powerful weapon in the game in the first room. The player has a "choice" whether to use it or not, but just being "a choice" doesn't make it positive. Good design takes precedance over even giving the player choices.

No you make consequence that are balanced, using ring give abilities to Frodo but it make turn Boromir against you, using it in tavern make no sense for player in any way.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Indeed, his "imagine the bestest system evar" argument was a thing of beauty., I shall forever treasure the memory of this discussion.

 

[galsiah]

The truth is that if players can avoid a set-back through reloading 95% of them will.

This is an aspect of most (not all) current games. It is not an eternal truth independent of game design. This situation is created by current design.

if a game designer wants people to accept unfavourable situations they have to remove the idiotic option to load whenever the player feels like it.

If you mean "unfavourable" to the player, then yes. If you mean to the party, I disagree. All the designer needs to do is to prevent the player wanting to reload by making the situation interesting and entertaining.
In an RPG, where there really ought not to be any clear idea of "winning" or "losing", there's no reason to think this is impossible.

However temporary stat penalties for death combined with a system that disallows convenient loading would force people to accept minor penalties.

Both of these seem pretty lame to me. Stat penalties make nonsense of the game world - they take reloading from an outside concept to an in game mechanic. Looking at an in-game character and thinking "he's a little weak because I reloaded", makes me think the game world is ludicrous.
Disallowing convenient loading just means you're accepting the player being pissed off - then making sure he's even more pissed off if he reloads. This strikes me as a very poor solution: your job is to entertain the player, and all you're doing is providing a rock and a hard place.

Whether or not failure is dull is questionable. What is important is that people perceive it to be dull. It's a vicious cycle...

Agreed.

Currently though it wouldn't matter if the next big CRPG has exciting consequences for failure because no-one will ever see it.

Not necessarily. I don't think it's impossible to train the player to see that failure can be interesting within one game. You'd just have to start small, and make almost every instance of failure in every challenge interesting. You can rely on the player not to reload for meaningless stuff, so that's your opportunity to showcase the Failure Can Be Fun ethos. Do this consistently, and I think you'd get the player to expect failure to lead to interesting consequences.

It wouldn't be easy, since as you say, you'd be working against player expectations from previous games. I think it's possible though.

Death being inconsequential is going to make the player think "huh?" the first time and that's not a good thing. However people can generally get over it fairly quickly. Reloading on the other hand has serious implications for gameplay as well as being nonsensical, making it the greater of the two evils.

I disagree. The player quickly gets used to inconsequential death, it's true, but in a This-World-Is-Trivial-Nonsense fashion. His perception of the game world as anything other than contrived nonsense is gone forever. This has no consequence for game mechanics, but huge consequence for the player's experience of the game.

Reloading is not nonsensical in game world terms, since reloading does not exist as a game world concept (until you start penalizing characters for reloads, which is a bad idea for this reason). Reloading gives the player an odd experience of the order of events, but the game world itself makes perfect sense.

 

[sabishii]

Then that's some small measure of entertainment (not enough IMO, but something). I think failure usually should provide extra gameplay, but that's not a fundamental principle.

That's what I meant as my point. That you don't need extra gameplay after every failure. Sometimes a failure should just be the end of itself but even without extra gameplay the player can draw something out of it. And of course I agree that should not be the majority of cases, but I think it should happen at times.

However, (near)death really ought to be a big deal with significant implications. If it doesn't have a large story impact, it should at least have significant gameplay implications.

Hm, yeah, I think you're right about that when you put it that way. BUT in my opinion even if there aren't significant gameplay implications to death, I'd still prefer the possibility of death as in the BG games to the absurdity of non-death in NWN2.

You lose the "potential" of that character, whether its combat resources, backstory, or future interactions. Unless such a death invokes a storyline branch, simply experiencing the death doesn't compansate for the role-playing fun you lose out on (except if roleplaying mourning is your thing). So almost everyone reloads or if they can resurrects.

And if in a conversation, you say the wrong thing and this leads to the NPC being angry at you and ending the roleplay storyline that they had (random example: BG2 romances). Do you reload after that?

 

[Bradylama]

You're assuming that their making it through to the end is the aim. It isn't.

I bow to your superior thinking.

We should have enough for a "Dumbfuck" right here.

 

[doctor_kaz]

Does anyone know what kind of linearity/nonlinearity this game will have? Will it be open-ended like BG2 or will it be hub-and-spoke like NWN and Kotor? All other things being equal, I would hope for the more open-ended game. There's something extra immersive about feeling like you're just one tiny part of a huge world and nothing conveys that like a big map with 25 different locations that ou can visit at any time. I think that's one of the reason why I can ultimately play games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the Baldurs Gate series, or Oblivion for 90 hours without blinking.

 

[kris]

Indeed, his "imagine the bestest system evar" argument was a thing of beauty., I shall forever treasure the memory of this discussion.

And hence he run away after not having been able to form a single coherent argument that wasn't squashed into oblivion. He was not the first to have fallen, alas many had been humiliated before.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Imagine I have made the best sarcastic retort ever, then respond as if I'd said that, mm'kay.

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

Imagine I have made the best sarcastic retort ever, then respond as if I'd said that, mm'kay.

You don't get it. The argument is about different game designs. You are saying one design is bad because you can come up with crappy implementations of it. Much better arguments could be made against character death, but you aren't making them.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Nope, you don't get it. He was countering my points by saying I wasn't arguing with an *imagined* system, a system which he didn't actually specify, but predicted would be great. Of course I can't argue with something which is purely imaginary. He didn't even put forth exactly what the consequences of death would be, how they would be interesting and strategic, and more fun for the player than existing systems, only that he was sure they would be. The only actual concrete point he made was about characters being wounded and sitting out a battle, but that isn't actually a death mechanic, its a wounds mechanic.

Saying "death should be more meaningful and fun" is about as useful as saying "there should be world peace and no more poverty". Ok, sure, great, but unless you actually have a workable plan, with concrete steps as to how, its merely a happy pipe dream, one which no one actually takes seriously, unless they are fools.

A perfect example :

Not necessarily. I don't think it's impossible to train the player to see that failure can be interesting within one game. You'd just have to start small, and make almost every instance of failure in every challenge interesting.

There is 0% substance here. He proposes that you make every instance of failure fun, but not *how*. Its as empty a statement as saying "we should end world hunger". There is no substance to his arguments, and he has had similar statements in most of his posts.

I truly can't argue with something that isn't even a concept, but merely the premise of a possible concept. If you feel thats a cop-out, well, good for you.

 

[dunduks]

Good Lord ...
Ninja, you've been given many examples of how to make NPC death "fun" and why should one continue to play after losing someone in party. Why is it that you cannot comprehend that a game can be designed in a way that will not make death a showstopper, but a consequence that still presents interesting results.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Examples? I've been given nothing but vague hypotheses and "look at X-Com!". A tactical strategy game? Fantastic.

I understand that you can make a game where death isn't the end, but provides interesting strategic consequences, which people won't just reload past. Look at any RTS, look at the Sims. Games where the characters are little more than a collection of stats. Hell, the helper chap in Diablo 2 counts in that category. You've yet to convince me that its possible to make a deep, involved RPG, with deep, involved, heavily scripted party members in the same manner.

But feel free to quote these "many examples" to me, jog my memory hey?

 

[kris]

Examples? I've been given nothing but vague hypotheses and "look at X-Com!". A tactical strategy game? Fantastic.

I understand that you can make a game where death isn't the end, but provides interesting strategic consequences, which people won't just reload past. Look at any RTS, look at the Sims. Games where the characters are little more than a collection of stats. Hell, the helper chap in Diablo 2 counts in that category. You've yet to convince me that its possible to make a deep, involved RPG, with deep, involved, heavily scripted party members in the same manner.

You just conceded that it is possible in other game and that have made it. There is not something special about a RPG that says it is not possible to make the same things possible there.