Unwinnable Battles

[Calax]

I think it is a ... not a straw man... what's the word? I dunno... bronze goblin.

 

I think it's a bronze goblin to suggest that freeform is more possible in pnp. With the exception of a very few, players in pn like things even more formulaic than in a game. They bitch far worse when they die.

probably because it takes forever to roll up a new character JUST the way they like it.

[LadyCrimson]

@Cant - After Tigranes post, I thought I did understand - tho it's possible I didn't, can never be sure. You should hear my husband and I sometimes, talking in increasing circles when we were actually saying pretty much the same thing from the start.

 

I don't, and I don't think I ever said, that I hate having to withdraw and come at an objective from a different angle. I simply hate not knowing in advance that multiple options are possible before I waste time looking. Foreknowledge doesn't decrease my personal enjoyment, but lack of such foreknowledge can increase my annoyance. My antipathy towards lack of clues etc. is directed only towards main plot quests/obstacles that have to be done to progress. Perhaps some of the difference in viewpoint stems because I typically look for the non-battle option first - I always have - by the time I fight, I've already determined it is, indeed, the only option - whether because the game dictates it or I decide I prefer that option. Thus I'd like the clue that I must fight to be there, so I don't waste my time. Backwards maybe? The thing is, you want one thing, and I may not - imo you have to give the player a choice of, not have it be one or the other. Something games don't do well, as I already agreed.

 

Conceptually I don't think it'd be that difficult to allow at least a sort of middle-ground - perhaps you could, for example, have a game setting that dictates how deep the "clues" NPC's are allowed to give you, via using/not using certain lines in their dialog trees - giving the player some control of how much 'leading' they desire to be possible - or an unwinnable battle would tell you it was such, but only after you'd died a certain number of times - say 10 or 15. But I still think the main problem isn't so much getting the 'average' mass player to accept change - it would be that games with too many 'path options' per objective would likely add a lot more programming time and other such stuff, which the publishers aren't generally too keen on.

 

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@ Walsh - I didn't specify pnp, and I wan't referring to table-top gaming. I was thinking of performance acting/re-enacting. Now, admittedly I have done neither, so perhaps I'm wrong about whether it's more possible or not; I have, tho, had numerous friends who were into both types and while they'd argue, in the end they weren't all that concerned about it. Maybe they were a less ... competitive ... group than most. I wouldn't know.

[Calax]

on a related (slightly) subject, why aren't there more games that have multipul ways through a fight/war?

 

Like in the origional command and conquers, they had you choosing an attack path, except you could play each to a different strength.

 

Path A is for military force and the people who love to smash their way through their opponents.

Path B is subterfuge with a spy team trying to steal an opponents battle plans

Path C is a defensive stance that attempts to draw attention away from a collegue that's prepping for path A.

[EUIX]

Deus Ex, coming out the New York Subway after turning from UNATCO. Must have reloaded over ten times trying to kill Gunthar.

[metadigital]

Unwinnable battles in general remind me of puzzles in adventure games that are completely random (ie, no way to actually logically figure them out). There is NOTHING so annoying as thinking you have a problem set before you that you're supposed to solve, and then realizing that there's either no way to solve it, or the only way to "solve" it is stupid trial and error and 50 re-loads. Sure, I've put up with it/done it to get through an otherwise good game, but I don't find it fun.

but I also like games to give me some sense of direction - "one of the wizards in the southeast continent town of Boolah might know something about that". I'd still have to explore a lot and talk to a lot of wizards/other people to find 'the one' and to me that seems realistic enough. Even in real life, most of the time you'd likely have built up enough information/clues/advice to know what things to try first.

 

Problem is most time that's the only clue you get (which is then added to your "to do" list, which in turn means it's important).. in real life you have like 10 leads and then you choose which ever you find the most likely to be fruitful. So you are still being 'led by the nose' very much so.

See, what would be ideal is a multitude of ways to solve a battle (stealth, tank, etc) ... which requires a few different paths to be designed, i.e. extra work equating to extra expense. Then you could have an Ultima-type sprinkle of non-essential side-quests (e.g. the flying carpet), some of which could be fiendishly difficult .. and not "difficult" in the Grand Theft Auto run-around-and-collect-hundreds-of-tokens-to-find-a-small-reward sense, more an easter-egg type extra. The problem is that this sort of effort is really poor value in Return On Investment, unless the game is a classic and is played relentlessly, in which case it will create its own demand ... or is that a chicken-and-egg catch-22 ..?

 

Deus Ex, coming out the New York Subway after turning from UNATCO. Must have reloaded over ten times trying to kill Gunthar.

I only tried to beat him after many times through ... he's not easy there ...

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Roleplaying a fugitive could be pretty compelling, but when it's such a small part of any particular CRPG, you can't expect the devs to invest such disproportionate resources on it. Which is where paying a fine comes in.

 

True, but how disproportionate is it to implement a scenario where, under the watchful gaze of authorities, PCs need to resort to fences instead of regular merchants? In a dungeon, would spawning a goblin horde be much more cost effective than spawning town guards that were chasing after the PC in order to bring him to justice - or at least hinted as such in pop-up text? There's only so much a developer can weasel out of implementing this kind of relatively easy situations while using the resources excuse.

 

Also, the concept of authorities doesn't need to be ever present - you can merely suggest it through some well placed elements. Wanted posters in Fallout 2 set the mood in a very effective manner - the PC was at odds with authorities without being surrounded by it at every turn; consequences to this were mostly suggested by ocasional interactions with NPCs that reacted to Karma values, such as the Wright kid and his family who would simply disdain you and keep you from solving their quests. It's not necessary to present drastic consequences to criminal actions but it is necessary there be consequences. You can apply this to several situations - law enforcement spawning somewhere instead of yet another trivial and inconsequential enemy horde, forbidden access to some location with the possibility of solving some local problem, more guards patrols when you arrive in a town, being forced to move about town with no weapons equipped, using certain types of magical restrictions, and so on. I don't think paying a fine is a particularly bad approach either, but it does become laughable when it removes consequences of past actions. The Elder Scrolls had it halfway right.

[Tigranes]

In that case, what are the benefits of being a fugitive?

[metadigital]

Chicks?