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PrimeJunta

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  1. PrimeJunta
    I'm talking structure of system of game mechanics, which is not the same thing as the program architecture of the game engine. The system of game mechanics is implemented on top of the game engine. I don't know if Unity even knows about a beast called a "quest." But that's neither here nor there; I don't know enough about game programming to be able to say much about that end of things. Yeah. Like the entire game.
  2. PrimeJunta
    This makes no sense to me. If you have two coders working on the same problem, and one of them solves it by writing 100 lines of code, and the other one solves it by writing 10,000 lines of code, and both solutions work equally well, why would the more verbose one deserve the bigger reward?
  3. PrimeJunta
    That's not necessarily what quest XP means. I would expect quests to have subsidiary goals, and the XP to be dealt out by completing those. They pretty much have to. Consider the main quest -- it would be a leetle silly if you only got your XP award for completing it after you won the game. Also dealing out XP in giant chunks makes for an unnecessarily bumpy ride. Better to split up a 1000 XP quest into four 250 XP sub-goals, and then go with those. If you change your mind just before one of them, well, that's too bad I guess. Of course if you split it up too much it can become exploitable too -- Valorian will be meticulously following every quest right up to the point where it closes off other quests, then doing the other ones, then finishing the one that gives the biggest reward. So you don't want to make it too fine-grained if you don't want to reward foolishness like that.
  4. PrimeJunta
    I agree. They might be. In fact adventure games are predicated on the assumption that they are -- there's very little in the way of in-game incentives for advancing the plot (=completing in-game goals) other than the action in itself. In a way, a cRPG is an adventure game turbocharged with character development and incentives for it. And it's that much more effective if the incentives align with the goals than if they conflict. Because the in-game goals require your character to get into dangerous situations? Consider Fallout. Its in-game goals included, oh, finding a water chip, rescuing the Shady Sands chieftain's daughter from some raiders, retrieving a holodisk from The Glow for the Brotherhood recruiter, figuring out why the Hub caravans were disappearing, and so on and so forth. These involve lots of dangerous situations, from getting shot in the face by a supermutant or shredded by a Deathclaw to bleeding out of your anus from radiation poisoning. So if you don't like getting your character into dangerous situations, then you probably won't like Fallout much either -- you're probably find The Sims is more to your taste. (And yes, IMO the Fallouts would've been better games without kill XP, especially with the wandering monsters in the wastelands.) One. More. Time. Questing is the core mechanic for a quest-based cRPG.1 It. Determines. The. Victory. Conditions. Finishing the main quest is the victory condition. Everything else is a subsystem that can be used to get there. Combat. Stealth. Dialog. Crafting. This means that questing is NOT THE SAME as combat, stealth, dialog, crafting, or any of the other subsystems that make up the game, BECAUSE IT IS NOT A SUBSYSTEM. It is the CORE system driving the gameplay. It is the... thing used to structure and deliver everything else in the game. Since character advancement is the main incentive that a cRPG has (beyond the content itself), it makes a lot more sense to tie it to the main system rather than any of the subsystems. ANY of them -- combat, stealth, crafting, dialog, etc. Therefore, quest XP. 1Emphasis on "quest-based." There are other types of cRPG's as well. Here I'm talking about games like the IE ones, the KOTORs, the NWN's, VtM:B, etc.
  5. PrimeJunta
    Then you're confused. In-game goals are whatever the game creators decide are the in-game goals. The game system within which the game creators work do the accommodation and provide the incentives that direct player behavior. :sigh: Because a quest objective is an in-game goal, and the job of the game system is to provide incentives for you to complete in-game goals. Whereas picking a lock or killing a monster is a means to an end, ways to complete those goals. You can set your own goals on top of that, naturally (aka LARPing), so if you want to go on a murder rampage there's nothing stopping you. Or you can LARP a pacifist and try not to kill anyone. These goals are not aligned with the in-game ones, therefore there's no reason the game engine should reward (or punish) them. It's not the devs' job to anticipate any and all additional LARPy goals you may want to set for yourself; their job is to worry about the goals they're setting for you, and to make sure you're properly incentivized to pursue them. Why would you need to skip quests to do that? This time I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or just really dim. Here's a clue: you cannot complete a quest-based cRPG without completing the main quest. That makes the quest the core mechanic for delivering the content. Everything else is a subsystem. This is different from, say, Diablo, where combat is the core mechanic: any quests are distractions; the objective is to fight your way to the final boss and then defeat the final boss. All fighting, all the time.
  6. PrimeJunta
    I realize you were being sarcastic, but I'll point out the flaw in your attempt at reductio ad absurdum nevertheless. Aging XP has the same problem as kill XP or sneak XP: it is not aligned with in-game goals. Your objective is not to age. If you implemented aging XP, it would give players an incentive to pass as much time as possible. They would leave the game running over the weekend, or if there's a rest mechanic, spam that to let the days fly by. In a cRPG, the mechanic most closely aligned with in-game goals is the quest. Completing a quest objective is the cRPG equivalent of winning a race in a racing game. Winning a battle or picking a lock is the cRPG equivalent of overtaking a competitor in a racing game. Therefore, quest XP. QED.
  7. PrimeJunta
    Since we're speculating about motivations here, allow me as well. I think a lot of the angst we're seeing about mechanics is a case of "beware what you ask for, you may receive it." We, Kickstarter backers, asked the dev team to be open about how they're making the game. They are. Put another way, we asked to be allowed a peek into the sausage factory. And now that we're seeing what go into the sausages, some of us are getting kind of grossed out. When playing a cRPG, I think most of us want to be swept away by it, into another world full of excitement, adventure, and winsome pointy-eared elven maidens. What we're doing here is looking at the plumbing underneath that world. It turns out to be rather... unexciting. Un-fantastic. We're talking costs and incentives, frameworks and systems. I think this is a big turn-off to most people. They'd rather not think too hard of what goes into designing the skeleton of the giant on whose skin all those elven maids frolic in the noonday sunne. I think the subset of gamers who really want to think hard about those underlying mechanics -- like Hormalakh here, and me, and a few others -- is really pretty small. The rest are afraid to dissect why they loved some game so much, for fear of spoiling the experience. I loved the bejeezus out of Fallout and have played it probably a dozen times through, but I still think the crit system blows goats, and was tolerable only because of the variety of gross and funny death animations. If I say something like that about, say, BG2, I get "he's saying the game sucked herp derp." Beware what you ask for; you may receive it.
  8. PrimeJunta
    It's only an obstacle if there's something meaningful behind it. A locked door that stands between you and the princess you're rescuing is an obstacle. A locked broom closet door is just a locked door. It would be stupid and pointless to reward you for picking the broom closet door lock. It would be even stupider and more pointless to give the same reward for picking both locks. The fact that most cRPG's do this doesn't make it any less stupid or wrong. And don't give me "but doing stuff is practice and practice makes perfect:" that's another red herring. XP is a very high-level abstraction that represents and lumps together all your experience and then lets you, metagame, decide what, specifically you've learned. It's a simple system that gets the job done and gives a lot of freedom to decide which way you want to go. I like it. The "practice makes perfect" rationale will give us a system where you improve skills by using them: picking locks will make you better at lockpicking, but won't give you generic XP to spend on, e.g., deciphering ancient poetry. And we know just how well THAT works in a cRPG (see Oblivion). [N.b.: It can work very well in PnP -- Call of Cthulhu has such a system, for example; with a GM around to just say "Sorry, you don't get to check your Archaeology skill just by spending your weekend at the British Museum looking at sarcophagi" it's extremely playable. But that's because deciding whether a skill check "counts" is always a judgment call -- if you were staring at those sarcophagi because you're investigating the gruesome, supernatural death of an egyptologist and learned something pertinent to that, then yeah, it'd count, but if you just went there to herp derp practice your archaeology, then it doesn't. A computer can't easily make these judgment calls, so putting it in a cRPG will lead to very wonky results.] And why is that? Because the systemic imbalances in the game force game designers to design around them. They can't put in a spawn-o-mat or a big field of traps without either creating an XP hotspot or having to locally change the rules (like with those 0 XP shades in that one temple in BG2). Both are bad. Lose the XP-for-process thing and the problem never arises in the first place.
  9. PrimeJunta
    A final thought re powergaming: a quest-XP only system won't do anything to stop that, and it shouldn't. What it does is align the powergamer's motivations with the in-game goals. Instead of hunting after wandering monsters, spawn points, locks, and traps, the powergamer would have to hunt for quests, the most efficient (=least resource-consuming) ways to complete them, and the most efficient ways to build powerful characters and parties. And I am 100% certain that every intelligent powergamer will find that a LOT more enjoyable than trying to kill everything, unlock everything, and untrap everything, whether it makes sense or not. Even Valorian and Helm. They just haven't realized it yet.
  10. PrimeJunta
    I hear what you're saying. My previous comment was a gut feeling I got from skimming reading through the thread. But what you're after ^^^^ (the bit I quoted here) is something you can already do in most RPGs. My point was that preventing behaviour in other players who are not playing the same P:E playthrough as you has no effect on your enjoyment level. Only your own play style can dictate that. What others do in their own game is their business. The problem is that we're looking at the... thing from different points of view. I'm thinking of it from the designer's point of view. The question I'm asking is "What kinds of mechanics should a game have so that it supports as broad a range of different playstyles and experiences as possible, without favoring one over the other, nor rewarding behavior taken for out-of-game reasons?" IOW, I want to see a game system that's as "neutral" as possible, which gives both content designers and players as much freedom as possible. Concretely? If MCA decides he wants to write up a township full of antagonistic and allied factions, fiendish intrigue, criminal masterminds, gangs, enforcers, police, lone lunatics, sneaky heists and stealthy assassinations, the game system should make that as easy as possible. And if the player decides he wants to approach that township as a paladin in shining armor, always honorable, protecting the weak, raising the downtrodden, bringing down the corrupt, the game should support that. And if the player decides he wants to approach the township as a leader of a band of highly efficient assassins-for-hire, ready to contract to the highest bidder for stealthy nighttime burglaries and daring gangland hits, then the game should support that too. And if TIm Cain wants to design a wizard's tower filled with fiendish traps, deadly guardians, etc. etc., the system should support that just as well. And if the player wants to approach that as a wrecking ball or a sneaky spy, etc. etc. What that means is that the mechanics of the system should not autonomously give any of these approaches greater rewards than any others. And fishing for XP -- opening every lock, untrapping every trap, killing every killable creature -- is one very particular approach, and one that's usually disproportionately rewarded by cRPG's. Perhaps that's one reason for all the whining, actually -- it's always been rewarded, so cRPG nerds have trained themselves into playing this way, and now they feel uncomfortable if that extra special reward is taken away. Pure conservatism, IOW. Or better still, with no reward for untrapping, the designers wouldn't have to worry about whether they're unintentionally creating an XP hotspot by placing mines or traps or even a Spawn-O-Mat somewhere. They can just do whatever they feel fits the area or quest they're designing, and then explicitly assign the XP rewards for completing it to specific points in it. Much easier to control -- and way, way easier to balance late in the game, since all you have to do is adjust the XP rewards at those specific points, rather than adding or removing mines or adjusting the systemic XP reward for defusing a mine. This I already addressed elsewhere. Once more, it's a red herring. Kindly stop waving it around, it stinks.
  11. PrimeJunta
    It would be less awesome than with quest only XP. Why? Because picking only one of the approaches and neglecting the others will yield less XP, and a weaker character and party. If your wrecking-ball party didn't untrap and lockpick wherever they could, they'd miss out on that XP. If your sneaky party didn't kill everything they could, they'd miss out on that XP. Seriously. How hard is this to understand? Task XP -- whether it's for killing or lockpicking -- creates perverse incentives that do not align with in-game goals, and thereby rewards players who play in an inefficient way ("do everything whether it gets you closer to your in-game goal or not") rather than a party that thinks and plays in-game ("do your best to achieve your in-game goals.") "Fittingly" meaning "in no way at all" -- beyond the immediate consequence of your action. The award for picking a lock should be an unlocked lock. There should be no advantage to picking a lock over using a key, if you happen to have it. It's what's behind the lock that's important. Maybe it's the princess you're supposed to rescue. In a quest-based game, now that is a useful point to award XP. I'm not confusing anything, because it's the same behavior. Pull lever. Get pellet. Ding! We got here because you don't understand what's the difference between compulsively pushing a button to get a shiny, and doing something because it's engaging, interesting, exciting, challenging, or engrossing. I'll try one more time. Compare these two: Open bag of chips. Take a chip. Yummy. Take another chip. Yummy. Take another chip. Yummy. Repeat until bag is empty. Open The Fellowship of the Ring. Start reading. Interesting. Keep reading. Whoa dude. Keep reading more. WTF are these black riders all about? Keep reading. Whew, that was close. And who is this Strider type? Keep reading. Oh ****, I hope Frodo pulls through. Keep reading. Dude, elves! Continue until Sam & Rosie get married and everybody lives happily ever after, or at least until they die. Do you see any difference between these two experiences? Even a teensy tiny little one? Okay, good. Hold that thought. Now think of a computer role-playing game with a great, sweeping, epic story, big world, horrendous beasties, great heroes, what have you. Would it be better, or worse, if there's a bag of chips every few feet making you go "Rip. Oo, yummy. Take another one. Oo, yummy. Take another one. Oo, yummy?" If this still doesn't communicate the idea, I'm sorry, I can't help you any more. You can lead a horse to water and all that commotion.
  12. PrimeJunta
    My intention was to restrict discussion to stealth, because I thought that's a pretty hefty subsystem in and of itself and I wanted to keep things focused. I also wanted to avoid the quest XP/combat XP/task XP flog. That has clearly failed completely. Might be worth another try later after the whiners have finally gotten tired of whining about things no longer automatically going "ding!" every time they hit something so it falls down. Perhaps try another thread with the broader scope after things have calmed down abit?
  13. PrimeJunta
    I want to play the game by actively seeking combat. Then I want to play it again, but this time I want to find diplomatic solutions wherever I can. And then I want to play it a third time, this time picking my battles carefully, avoiding ones I don't want to fight and getting maximum advantage in the ones I do. Then a fourth time, but now I want to disable and circumvent as many enemies as I can instead of killing them all outright. And I want all of these approaches to be enjoyable and ideally roughly equally viable. I'm starting to suspect some of you guys might not be very bright. This really shouldn't be that hard to understand. Huh.
  14. PrimeJunta
    Cheap shot. Also probably not true. Edit: TL;DR: Things are fun in a game if there's a reason to do them. Picking a lock because "ding! XP!" is a weak, metagame reason. Picking a lock because there's something you want on the other side is a good, in-game reason. I want to get rid of the weak metagame reasons because they cheapen the strong in-gmae reasons, and thereby reduce my enjoyment of the game. What's more, I believe that 99% of the people whining about no-combat-XP will enjoy a game with properly aligned incentives more as well, they just don't realize it themselves. I know what's good for Helm, Valorian, and you better than you do. So there. I'm concerned about this question because I do not find degenerate strategies fun, and their very availability reduces the enjoyment I get from a game. Seriously, think about how you play a game. Have you played DX:HR, DA:O, or KOTOR, for example? Those give XP for lockpicking or untrapping. There's a little "ding!" of XP gained every time you do that. Did you pick all the locks and untrap all the traps you came across? I did. I don't know that I went out of my way to hunt for them, but I did clear every mine in a minefield even though I'd only have needed to clear a way through. I would be willing to wager that almost every player did. If you remove XP from the equation and think purely in terms of the enjoyability of the activity, how enjoyable is going from mine to mine in a minefield and clicking on them, when there's a group of enemies to fight and a quest objective to reach on the other side? In my opinion, it's not bleedin' enjoyable at all. It's a pointless chore. Busywork. And it's definitely not something your character would do in the same situation in a book, movie, or PnP gaming session... well, not unless he so badly afflicted with OCD that he was barely able to function. Different players have different boredom thresholds, but whether you're talking about two minutes spent clearing a minefield you have no reason to clear, or a week spent grinding trash mobs in some MMO you kids keep talking about, it's still boring busywork you only do for that little "ding!" And if that's the only way you're "having fun," well then it's a pretty sorry excuse for a game. I want a game to be designed in such a way that it rewards as few degenerate strategies as possible, because I want to stay focused on what makes the game fun. Which in a cRPG is discovering places, uncovering lore, interacting with characters, solving problems, unraveling the great mysteries of the plot, and developing my party and my character. Anything that distracts from that and sends me gallivanting after locks, traps, or wandering yetis is bad and should be killed with fire. If someone else "has fun" clicking a button to see a counter go up and then get a "ding," well hey, I hear there's a multi-billion MMO industry catering just. to. you. So would you kindly leave at least a couple Kickstarted niche games to those of us who are in it for the gameplay rather than the "ding?" Pretty please? With a cherry on top? There, done.
  15. PrimeJunta
    In my opinion that would be worse. It would send you chasing after traps and locks whether you actually needed to deal with them or not. I've played games with this incentive, and that's exactly what happens. Hell, sometimes it's even mentioned in walkthroughs -- "Hey, don't forget to pick those locks, they're worth a hefty bit of XP." Once again, you have systemic incentives misaligned with in-game objectives, which produces degenerate behavior in players.
  16. PrimeJunta
    If it's hostile and eats people, I would expect someone to want it dead. That's a quest right there. If nobody wants it dead, why would you want to kill it? If just you want it dead, why would you deserve a reward for killing it? Anyway, I'm done with this topic. It's just going round and round in circles. Enough.
  17. PrimeJunta
    And this is bad, because...?
  18. PrimeJunta
    @Ywerion -- That would happen if stealth was noticeably easier or faster than combat. I just don't think that's necessarily or even very likely so. In most stealth mechanics sneaking is slower than running; you spend a fair bit of time waiting for patrols to pass, and if somebody spots you, you're in a much tighter spot than if you had been able to pick your ground and properly prepare for the encounter. Stealth is tricky. Err too much in one direction and it does become a dominant strategy. Err too much in the other, and it becomes as good as useless. It all depends on how the mechanics work in practice. I'll be quite interested to find out where P:E strikes the balance.
  19. PrimeJunta
    I apologize, Valorian. I mistakenly assumed that you wanted to have a meaningful exchange of ideas. If you just want to trade barbs instead, you're going to have to find somebody else to do it with. I won't waste your time again. Send me a PM me if you change your mind.
  20. PrimeJunta
    I wrote a bunch of code today. It runs and does something. It is not, however, yet useful for accomplishing anything. Do you think I should be rewarded for writing those lines of code? Me, no. I think I only deserve a reward once that part is finished and ready to accomplish the purpose for which I'm writing it.
  21. PrimeJunta
    Assuming that most players will want to complete most quests they accept, this seems like a fairly minor difference in terms of results, but much, much more complicated to implement. What, exactly, counts as 'sneaking past an enemy' anyway? This is clearly more ambiguous than killing them. The incentives are slightly different, though -- the scheme you're proposing rewards trying, whereas the quest-xp system rewards succeeding. Personally I strongly favor incentive schemes that reward results rather than process. For example, I would prefer to be paid for outputs rather than by the hour. In fact I think a big reason things go wrong in the workplace is because people are rewarded for adherence to process rather than for achieving objectives. But that's waaaayyy off topic... except insofar as XP is an incentive scheme.
  22. PrimeJunta
    True. And yes, we are, that's what the Adventurers' Hall stretch goal was all about. Also, since we're starting at level one and there's a good deal of freedom when developing the characters, I've no doubt you can choose stealth-oriented skills, spells, and perks when leveling up your companions too.
  23. PrimeJunta
    Mmmmaybe. I still think you might be able to roll up a properly ninja'ed up party, especially if there's magic to support the stealth mechanics. Mass invisibility + mass silence? In fact, I think it might be quite interesting to play such a party. They'd kick ass at infiltration and assassination, but be genuinely challenged when forced toe-to-toe. Probably too hard for Ironman, given what will probably happen if you're spotted at the wrong time, but still...
  24. PrimeJunta
    @Sabotin, that would end up in the same place as quest XP. The only difference is when you'd get it -- when performing the action rather than when achieving the objective. That's IMO less intuitive and certainly more complicated than just tying the XP to objectives. I'd file it under "unnecessary complication."
  25. PrimeJunta
    @Fearabbit, great ideas all around. To clarify, when I said "reduces your chances of being spotted" I meant that as a high-level abstraction -- reducing the spot radius and noise radius are very good ways of accomplishing it. I would also like lighting to factor into it. If you're in deep shadow you might not be spotted even if you're in someone's vision cone. Conversely if you're carrying a light source, you're automatically de-stealthed.
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