Should a Game restrict Us from Abusing it, or should We restrict Ourselves from Abusing it?

[TrashMan]

that's fine. they should balance the game assuming people will do cheap things then. Let people who use their own limitations add extra difficulty since that's their intention anyway. Don't require us to limit ourselves just to get the desired level of challenge.

 

I think that's where the different levels of difficulty come into play. At the higher levels, these limits can be put in place. But at the lower levels of difficulty, I don't think developers should limit a player's ability to play "cheap", so to speak.

 

IMO, it's about player choice. If I "choose" to have very strict limits placed upon me, I'll play at a higher level of difficulty. If I "choose" to rest for 40 hours straight or not have to worry about gold taking up space in my inventory's weight limit, I'll play at the lowest difficulty. If the developer decides to put restrictions, period, then the player no longer has as many choices about how to play the game.

 

I think they shoud put limits.

Playing cheap is an exploit. It is basicly cheating.

 

As I said people are REALLY bad at controling their impulses and holding themselves back ESPECIALLY if they stand something to gain from it. Getting trough the encounter faster/easier IS a gain.

We humans are evolutionary wired for efficiency. We optimize.

The exploit is drawing us in, because we see efficiency.

It's a basic loophole in human nature. Even those of us who hate such things still feel drawn to them.

[Merin]

Make the game so the default difficulty of completing the game without dying or feeling the need to reload is easily accomplished for the average player (more skilled than a newbie, nowhere near as versed and practiced as hardcore.)

 

Make any of the tasks in the game easily identifiable as likely to succeed or likely to fail on a given attempt, so players know better than to try something they will constantly fail at, on the default setting for the average player.

 

Remove any "succeed or die" and "succeed or never be allowed to try again" common tasks from the default setting for the average player.

 

In short, do your best to design the game to create very few situations where abusing the game becomes desirable (or, in some cases, an almost necessity.) And then have different toggles and difficulty settings for those who actually want no notification of potential for success, and want the "succeed or else" conditions present.

 

Default game should be "winnable" without death or reload for average player, and the difficulty settings and other sliders / mode can adjust that.

 

Really should eliminate the concern about "abuse" as long as the game mechanics are well designed and tested for exploits.

 

One really quick example - even if there's an infinite gold bug, or more likely, a pattern of buying from one merchant and selling to another for profit, make the distribution of normally found gold and treasure sufficient that it's easier, quicker and more fun to get the gold and items you need by playing the game right than by wasting the time exploiting the bug for unlimited funds that in the end really don't give you that much of an advantage.

[Osvir]

Fair enough. I'm not sure where you can get from there though - I guess you're just trying to point out that the system used by a game has a large bearing on the enjoyability, even if the plot, characters, etc are the same.

 

Yes

 

To be honest I don't really get why there's so much discussion about preventing rest. I mean, what's the goal? Just to make the game harder? I don't see how it would do that, but I do see how it could do the opposite.

 

Let's look at Baldur's Gate: at some point you've fought through as much as you can take, you have no spells left, and your party has 15 HP between them. At this point basically your only option is to find somewhere safe to rest, and do so. What does it matter if you've been awake for 8 hours to get to that point, or 48? If you can't rest for another 8 hours, pretty much your only option is to leave the game running for an hour of real time while you do something else. It's not like you can just say 'I'll be hardcore and fight on anyway' - you'd die the moment any enemy lands a blow.

 

If instead you use something other than a rest mechanic to throttle the rate at which people cast spells, what does that actually gain? In all the games I've ever played that's led to less downtime required, not more.

 

I am speculating and wondering, personally, if something like this could even work in a cRPG:

http://forums.obsidi...0996-abc-magic/

 

So, serious question: why are we talking about this? What do we want to get out of it? I don't really understand this discussion but I might have a better idea if those were spelled out to me.

 

So we can discuss some common grounds that ticked us off in older games, ideas, speculation, dreams, thoughts. Be friends and work together. Endorse ideas and improve on ideas. I am talking about this because I like to talk about this; What would a great game be with this theme?

 

This discussion, and the question that I ask at the top, do you want to be restricted or do you want more freedom?

 

Do you want to be able to throw a spell every second by using an exploitable method in a game, or do you wish it to be more authentic to lore i.e a realistic fantasy? One of these are unfortunately mechanically restricted, which means that Obsidian would have to restrict the game from having the exploitable feature.

 

I wrote this in another thread: <- EDIT: Lol no I didn't...

 

<removed, Page 2, look for the 1's and 0's>

 

I want efficiency in the game, and my way of what efficiency would be is in the ABC Magic thread (linked in this post)

Edited October 4, 2012 by Osvir

[Jozape]

I definitely don't want to be restricted because some people perceive the need for the developers to place a straight-jacket on the player because they lack temperance to play the game they supposedly want to play it.

[TrashMan]

 

Well if we're talking about encounter design in that way, then I'm definitely in favour of assuming you only rest after a sensible timeframe, but not enforcing that. After all, it's no fun if you get a couple of really unfortunate rolls in a fight but the game forces you to press on because "that shouldn't have been much of a challenge", and I don't see healing up after a hard fight as abusing a game mechanic.

 

This shudn't be a problem. Provided you stocked up properly you should be able to press on.

 

No single encoutner should drain your fatigue anyway, and you always have the option to go back to camp.

If only two hours passed since yoo last slept you really shouldnt' be able to sleep, but you can rest and mend wounds.

[TrashMan]

 

Let's look at Baldur's Gate: at some point you've fought through as much as you can take, you have no spells left, and your party has 15 HP between them. At this point basically your only option is to find somewhere safe to rest, and do so. What does it matter if you've been awake for 8 hours to get to that point, or 48? If you can't rest for another 8 hours, pretty much your only option is to leave the game running for an hour of real time while you do something else. It's not like you can just say 'I'll be hardcore and fight on anyway' - you'd die the moment any enemy lands a blow.

 

If instead you use something other than a rest mechanic to throttle the rate at which people cast spells, what does that actually gain? In all the games I've ever played that's led to less downtime required, not more.

 

 

If your party is completely drained - yes, they should be able to rest and sleep.

Wounded is not the same as drained mind you. Drained = dead tired.

 

RESTING (basicly encompases taking a breather, mantaining items/armor, mending wounds, etc..) would speed up health recovery and restone a small amount of fatigue

 

SLEEPING restores full fatigue and speeds up resting even more. Sleeping pre-desposes that regenerative magic has been cast to speed up the recovery.

 

 

So if you prepared badly, wasted your healing spells and didn't bring healing items - then yes, you should really turn around and get back to town. A town would offer man benefits - including even faster healing with no limitations to it (since you can hire a dozen healers to take care of you 24/7)

 

 

 

In other words - the deeper into enemy territory you go, the worse for you. Your resting/sleeping would be less efficient.

[PsychoBlonde]

I definitely don't want to be restricted because some people perceive the need for the developers to place a straight-jacket on the player because they lack temperance to play the game they supposedly want to play it.

 

I don't want this either, I'd prefer to have fun mechanics instead. Resting has been a horribly degenerate mechanic in IE games thus far, I'm hoping they find a way to make it functional without random restrictions.

[Gurkog]

They should focus on rewarding positive game practices rather than trying to stamp out negative ones... why would a player do something abusive if doing the 'right' thing gave them a greater reward.

Edited October 4, 2012 by Gurkog

[nikolokolus]

In a single player game I couldn't care less how other people play the game and what kind of exploits or loopholes they take advantage of. The key in my mind is for the developers to make a default game that has as few of these "broken" features as possible, so the game can be played the way they designed and balanced it, for those people who mostly play it straight or don't like to play like to power game.

 

But ultimately there is a difference between abusing bugs and people min-maxing.

[moridin84]

I think in general the game should 'restrict you from abusing it'. However there are obviously grey areas over what is 'abuse'.

 

You could probably consider resting after every fight to be an 'abuse'. However, from a practical perspective it's actually difficult to to make it un-abusable while not being too restrictive or awkward. That's the main reason behind most abusable mechanics.

[Osvir]

I'll just summarize my own ideas.

 

The least abuse-able I can think of in a couple of words:

 

* Magic regeneration at a constant flow, 1 point at a time. In other words, the spell's power is regained after in-game hours at a very slow and/or adjustable levels (difficulty) of speed.

* Make resting limited "You are already well rested, you can not rest now" or in a grumpy way from character "Nooooh, I've slept enough already! Leave me alone!" ~pun

* No sleeping in dungeons/Unless floor entirely cleared.

* More Difficulty Options (Not just "Easy", "Medium" or "Hard" but some depth to some sort of customizable difficulty)

* Mobile campsite

* Wilderness camping de-moralizes and City or Inn sleeping replenishes morale

* Riskier Camping

 

I would love a system wherein I play Baldur's Gate just like it is, just like I played it. Like many of us played it, moving around, clicking on targets to talk with them and so on and so forth. The only thing I really miss is that constant flow, that "regeneration". Maybe not a regeneration that heals up all of your Magic Charges (Memorization or whatnot) instantly, but over time and you get only 1 at a time.

 

Cumulatively the more you wait, the more will regain. To compare my idea with Baldur's Gate:

 

In Baldur's Gate I would fight an enemy, save, rest, save and regain all my spells. "Cool I've got all my spells, continuing my journey!"

 

In my idea I would fight an enemy, probably save, continue my journey and get back the spell memorization over time. Come night, I'd sleep. I would have progress, a constant flow of my characters journey without halts or restrictions to the story... but it would come at the price of being restricted mechanically. I don't know how long an in-game hour is going to be in-game or if there is even going to be a time system but I imagine one in-game hour taking about 4-5 minutes.

 

EDIT: Typo on page 2~:

 

[typo]

Can you rest here?

0 = False

1 = True

[typo]

 

Now imagine the game is side-scrolling, and for the sake of it that the quotes below is the game-screen.

 

Degenerate problem:

11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

This would be Baldur's Gate, you can save & rest at any point in the game.

 

Restricted solution:

11111111110001111111111000111111111100011111111110001111111111

I would say that Final Fantasy series deploy's somewhat a system like this. You can save/rest anywhere on the world map, but you can't save in dungeons (unless at a save/rest points).

 

Checkpoints:

00000000001110000000000111000000000011100000000001110000000000

Diablo II and similar employs something like this.

Edited October 4, 2012 by Osvir

[Gatt9]

The developers should not be designing around the behaviors of some subset of Players. Just because some Players might Reload doesn't mean that it should limit design. It's an extremely slippery slope, that ultimately leads us to the conclusion that there should never be failures because some players might reload. We should never miss, never do anything less than full damage, never be hit, we should never have bad paths in a conversation tree, etc.

 

If some people choose to God-mode a game, then simply let them. Don't design around them and leave good mechanics on the table, or implement debatable mechanics just because it solves the issue of Reloading.

 

Similiarly, Resting. Some people cannot stand to have their party in anything less than 100% state. The issue isn't Resting, it's how some people play. There's no reason to design around that, because it gets us right back on a slippery slope and leads us to regenerating health for everyone.

 

Design shouldn't be around a subset of Players exploiting a single player game. That's why we've never seen something like the Deck of Many Things, because some people are going to reload. So we lose out on a potentially fun experience. Design around a great idea, redesign around one that could be improved, but never design around some subset's need to God-mode.

[Gfted1]

That's why we've never seen something like the Deck of Many Things,

 

Psst.

[Sylvius the Mad]

so it should be my job to figure out how the designers intend for the game to be played?

Why do you care how the designers intended the game be played? Play it how you like to play it.

[Jojobobo]

I don't think there should be resting, sitting down for a little while or sleeping never magically made peoples' arms reattach themselves to their bodies. I think cooldown is key, giving a mass heal spell one use and a real time cooldown of 20 minutes would stop players from abusing resting entirely; as though someone could leave there game running for 20 minutes in a practical sense you often wouldn't bother. Then with easier difficulties you could just reduce the cooldown time, simple as. Sleep should only be there to reduce fatigue or exhaustion on a hardcore mode, like New Vegas, in my opinion. This method would be frustrating for people who want to blast their way through the game, but it adds in a nice amount of resource management in my opinion.

 

In a broader sense, I think any developer should try to make their game un-exploitable. The thing is, I like to play optimal characters. Why would I want to play an average Joe when I could be playing Superman? I guess some people might enjoy playing a really middle ground guy with no especially good focus in anything, but I don't. That being said, I still want combat or stealth or whatever I've optimised my character in to have some challenge - characters shouldn't be able to get exponentially good (like Skyrim) so that challenge no longer exists, it should be linear and there should be a maximum limit. I shouldn't have to purposefully hamstring a character when I know I could make him better because the devs didn't balance the game properly.

[Osvir]

I don't think there should be resting, sitting down for a little while or sleeping never magically made peoples' arms reattach themselves to their bodies. I think cooldown is key, giving a mass heal spell one use and a real time cooldown of 20 minutes would stop players from abusing resting entirely; as though someone could leave there game running for 20 minutes in a practical sense you often wouldn't bother. Then with easier difficulties you could just reduce the cooldown time, simple as. Sleep should only be there to reduce fatigue or exhaustion on a hardcore mode, like New Vegas, in my opinion. This method would be frustrating for people who want to blast their way through the game, but it adds in a nice amount of resource management in my opinion.

 

In a broader sense, I think any developer should try to make their game un-exploitable. The thing is, I like to play optimal characters. Why would I want to play an average Joe when I could be playing Superman? I guess some people might enjoy playing a really middle ground guy with no especially good focus in anything, but I don't. That being said, I still want combat or stealth or whatever I've optimised my character in to have some challenge - characters shouldn't be able to get exponentially good (like Skyrim) so that challenge no longer exists, it should be linear and there should be a maximum limit. I shouldn't have to purposefully hamstring a character when I know I could make him better because the devs didn't balance the game properly.

 

Difficulty is going to be very important for this game I believe.

 

An easier difficulty would stretch your character more towards the Superman character, but at the same time prove a challenge. Whilst harder difficulty gives you the middle-man Average Joe.

 

I said it in another post/thread, Difficulty should have depth. Like Skill Tree's have many paths, I would like to see a Difficulty Tree:

 

Difficulty, Easy/Normal/Hard/Expert (Comes with a pre-set difficulty on monsters damage/strength/AI)

- Adjust In-Game Hours

- Adjust Experience Gained

- Adjust Fog of War

- Adjust Resting (On/Off) *On: As Game Mechanics *Off: Old-School/Rest anywhere at any time

 

Can't think of anything else right now.

Edited October 5, 2012 by Osvir

[ogrezilla]

so it should be my job to figure out how the designers intend for the game to be played?

Why do you care how the designers intended the game be played? Play it how you like to play it.

because odds are the difficulty depends on it. I'm an optimizer. I want to be as strong as I can be. I want to feel like I'm doing the best I can. Gimping myself to add difficulty goes completely against that. I don't enjoy it. If I'm playing anything competitive and the opponent isn't good, I don't think of ways to handicap myself. I think I need to find someone better to play against.

 

At the same time, just playing a harder difficulty doesn't always work. I will always assume -- at least the first time I play through -- that the game is designed to be played in the most obvious way. If I have a ton of potions, I will assume I'll eventually need them. If I have access to a store that sells unlimited arrows for 1 gold a stack, I will never go without arrows because I'll assume the game wants me to be fully prepared. If the magic system allows me to cast spells whenever I want and gives me a way to recharge them whenever I want, I will do just that. Why would I have the option if I didn't need it? The next encounter might be crazy hard. I will always just assume the game is properly designed to encourage the intended behavior. I should have to go out of my way to abuse something. If design doesn't naturally lead to the intended conclusion, the design has a problem.

Edited October 5, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Cultist]

Good times with baldur's gate 2. Master thievery potion+couple of reloards =Ring of the Ram and about 10k in gold in several minutes.

That's why such actions should be skill-related to make reload impossible. Or pickpocket should be removed at all.

People will reload. i can't seriously remember guys who played after following unsuccessful pickpocket attempt entire town attacked them.

Skyrim tried to make resting attractive by Well rested bonus, but everyone ignored it.

Edited October 20, 2012 by Cultist

[Umberlin]

When it comes to a single player game? People can play the game they like, to their preference, and I, nor any of you, should have any say in that, nor should they have any say in how you or I play. If the people that want to restrict themselves can't manage to restrict themselves on their own, that's their own sad little problem, and no one else should have to suffer for it - not the people that can play legitimately all on their own, and not the people that don't care about playing legitimately in the first place. This is a hobby, not a Final Examination, conduct yourself as you choose, it's not serious business and it doesn't matter.

 

Those that need restrictions, such as on saves, already have modes - separate modes - that cater to their needs. Those that truly want to play legitimately will play legitimately regardless. Those that don't care, and want to exploit or abuse systems, will find a way to do so no matter what elements are put in place.

[Rahkir]

The only instance of game abuse that really impacted how I played the game was the power of my sorcerer via various cheesy combinations of spells (infinite wishes, stop time + improved alacrity + expending my whole arsenal and then casting a few spells to regain everything). Rest spamming and pickpocket reloading can be easily explained away by "My character wouldn't do that." But what is there to explain away why my sorcerer wouldn't create a simulacrum and destroy everything without taking a scratch? Would he really hold back that power just because it makes combat more tactical and challenging? I admit that's a matter of balancing the game, but it certainly felt like abuse to use those cheesy combinations of spells that really shouldn't have worked.

So ultimately, I think if the player has a reason why their character wouldn't abuse the system (sleeping for 80 hours in a hostile cave) then role-players will be satisfied, but if there is no good reason why their character wouldn't 'abuse the system' I think that can cause problems. Maybe I just get into character too much Either way people who want to abuse the system will find ways, most likely (I admit I am often one of those people, though not on my first playthrough).

[AGX-17]

Any obvious exploitable and balance breaking mechanics should be rooted out in testing. It's just proper game design. (for instance Skyrim's poorly designed stacking enchanting and alchemy skills: people "exploit" the system to craft items of ludicrous strength and then complain the game is to easy. Herp-a-derp.)

 

On the other hand I really see no reason to limit things like reloading a save game if you feel an outcome wasn't as favorable as you wanted. Mostly because restricting stuff like that could lead to all sorts of problems and unfair limitations.

 

I honestly don't think systems in Skyrim can be considered exploits, because it's no different from past Elder Scrolls games. Bethesda seems to build their systems with min/maxing and powergamers in mind, rather than roleplayers.

 

One old screenshot of a 4chan post from the days leading up to Oblivion's release is floating around out there, in which a guy talked at length about using those mechanics to make himself a weapon so strong he killed the unkillable end boss of Morrowind with one hit, crashing the game, at which point he declared he had just beaten Morrowind for good.

Edited October 20, 2012 by AGX-17

[Nerei]

I really do not understand this obsession with preventing any kind of potential exploitation in a single player game. If it was a mmo or had any kind of competitive multiplayer, I could understand it, it hurts other people, but here it affects none but the player.

No I do not really care about the "vision" or whatever the dev has to how a game should be played, they are not the ones playing, I am.

 

It is a bit like people saying "there should not be any cheats in a game" It's a conscious action for people to use those. If you do not like it, do not use it, but do not dictate how other people should play the game they paid for!

 

Play the game the way you want and let other people play the way they want!

 

 

That is not to say I want a "press to win the game" button or there should specifically be made cheap ways to cheese the game. Neither should it mean not fixing bugs etc. However neither should they try and prevent any kind of mechanics that normally would work okay and only if the player really want to use it as an exploit really is it!

 

 

Further do you seriously think you can eradicate all kinds of exploits? I know Firaxis tried it in their new Xcom game by saving the random seed in each mission and locking the data files, and it took me about 2 minutes to break the majority of it!

A simple executable explorer and a bit of creative reloading and it's at best a nuisance.

No I do not care about cheating in that game except when it is pulling cheap tricks (chain panic can break a 4 man squad in one round, almost no matter what you do), but I love to find ways to break it. Yes I will try for this one too if they try to design specifically to prevent all kinds of exploits.

 

 

Finally apparently this game will have some modding support or at least fairly open control files, this alone pretty much means that any kind of exploit control will have a snowballs chance in hell of succeeding!

 

 

Sorry to go on a rant but it seriously irritates me when people argue for and even more when devs actually make mechanics specifically to prevent what they might be exploits if people really intend to use it for that.

[Benison]

Skyrim has no balanced gameplay. Its predecessors have no balanced gameplay. It is a hiking simulator in a fantasy setting. I love the Bethesda experience for what it ist, a great "game" it is not.

 

All proper games should be balanced and it should be next to impossible to exploit their rules. If it is easy to exploit, the rule system is sh....lackluster. If it is to hard, use the difficulty slider.

[Sensuki]

The Baldur's Gate 1 resting mechanic wasn't too bad. When you didn't sleep in an Inn you healed what? 1-3 HP and used your healing spells.

 

In Baldur's Gate 2 (or Icewind Dale 1 can't remember which), the introduction of "Rest until fully healed" fixed people spamming mulitple rests, but people spamming rest after each encounter (lol so bad).

 

Project Eternity will not have healing spells as such. I also wouldn't be surprised if there's a campfire mechanic or something that controls where you can rest.

 

So that brings it a bit more back in line, the only thing now is whether you can rest to full health at a campfire in one setting, or if you can't, are you locked out of resting for a period of time?

 

The people that will not go out and adventure again until they're on full health will just idle the campsite until it's unlocked again. I don't believe there's any way to prevent people from playing like this. If there's also a random chance that people will be attacked while trying to rest in a dangerous area, people will still keep waiting or just save/load until it doesn't trigger an enemy.

 

So what's the trade off? If you want to be full health / per-rest abilities before each battle, you have to go back and find a campsite?

Edited October 21, 2012 by Sensuki

[eselle28]

I'm going to vote for some sort of third option. I think the game should be designed so that the average player won't feel the need to do dull or ridiculous things, but should allow the occasional neurotic to exploit if it really makes the game more enjoyable for that person.

 

I don't think "save abuse" is really that much of a problem. There are already some natural restraints on it - reloading is dull and time-consuming, and most people seem to gravitate toward only doing it after relatively important failures (dying, the death of a companion, a failure to complete a challenge the player knows will be very rewarding). But if typical, not-too-neurotic players really are reloading after every failure to pick a pocket, that suggests to me that either the citizens of that game are carrying around too much money in their pockets for the game's balance or that the penalties for failure are too harsh (entire towns full of people who will fight to the death to punish a pickpocket are a little silly).

 

I'd say the same goes for rest mechanics. If players are commonly resting after every two battles, that suggests to met that mundane enemies are doing too much lasting damage or that there need to be some regeneration mechanics or a bandage/potion/healing spell system. If players are resting for 40 hours at a time, maybe the game needs to recharacterize resting (it doesn't have to mean sleeping, after all, and it seems entirely reasonable that a party might want to simply camp for a couple days to let the archer's sprained ankle heal and everyone else to regain morale). And if a handful of players are neurotic enough to insist on parties at 100% health, despite it being a waste of time and unnecessary, then let them play how they want.