The Powergaming Problem

[Kiarean]

Okay, thought I'd do this and give my thoughts on power gaming and Obsidian's apparent comments on it. First off, I'll give my most basic stance, that moving to eliminate power gaming is the wrong position to take. Expanding on that, I'm not opposing the goal but approach, as I think it tends to give you a bias towards X being wrong and Y being right. A better approach would be to try and make power gaming irrelevant.

 

Making power gaming irrelevant would be best done (in my humble opinion) by taking the weight off of combat as the driving force of the narrative and also by integrating it more fluidly. What I mean by that is the choice of combat should directly impact the story, account for the difference between a character being there or not being there. If you kill the leader of the local bandits, does someone more vicious or less take his place? If you wipe out the entire group, does that clear the way for another group to expand and thus bigger a bigger threat overall? If you make combat a story element, then the goal becomes what makes the most interesting story, which makes the impact of power gaming irrelevant.

[Ieo]

What's this anti-power-gaming mechanic you're talking about? (Citation, I mean? I don't remember reading anything about that, but maybe I'm thinking about power-gaming differently, dunno.)

[Tigranes]

I.... am not sure why that makes powergaming irrelevant. Powergaming does get its kicks from the recognition the game gives it, but it is also a temptation to game the system for the fun of it. After all, you can't remove all such temptation, or you wouldn't have a game.

[Utukka]

If I understand you correctly...Why even concern about it in a single player only game? People who are gonna powergame are going to do it regardless of if it means killing everything in sight or if it means talking their way through. They will probably save often and just reload if they don't like the outcome. I'd rather they just focus on making a great story and having great combat. Very few games, if any, are not abusable in some form. Fact is, it's up to the player if he's gonna "cheat" the system.

[GhostofAnakin]

I never understood why so many people are so concerned with how other people want to play their game.

 

Why does Obsidian have to make sure players don't power game, or don't save any time they want, or don't do a whole host of other "cheap" things? It's a single player game. If someone wants to do that stuff, it isn't Obsidian's job to spend all this time and resources trying to make sure people don't "cheat" at their own game.

[Ieo]

Besides which powergaming kind of comes naturally with replays. And since I expect PE to have a lot of replay value...

[Adhin]

It's not about eliminating power gaming, they can't do that. That's just doing stuff as efficiently as possibly while building your character as powerfully/efficiently as possible. That'll always be there. To remove that you have to remove all the RPG mechanics entirely. at which point you still have speed runs. None of that is bad, none of that is what they're trying to remove. The stuff they've talked about is the feeling thats often there that, maximizing everything feels like the only way to go about things.

 

If we're talking about the whole XP not via kills to stop the 'feeling' that doing things one way then doubling back to murder everything to maximize XP then still not seeing it. That wont stop power gaming, it'll just even the playing field a bit more for folks who don't like feeling that need to kill **** they'd rather not.

[Giantevilhead]

I don't see how powergaming is even a problem in single player games.

 

It can be a problem in multiplayer games since the powergamers can force other gamers to powergame in order to compete but how I play a single player game has no effect on how you play your game.

[Sensuki]

I'm a power gamer.

 

I like games I can play multiple times, play it to experience the story the first few times after that it's about the gameplay, tactical challenge and atmosphere I guess.

 

I have a playstyle though, I can't say I ever abused rest spam in the IE games

[Hormalakh]

I think that what most of us in the forum talk about isn't really to stop "power-gaming," but to build efficient, robust, and thoughtful game mechanics that make the game fun to play in the way it was intended by the devs to be played. Having a backdoor that the developers didn't think about is what we don't want. But if the developers put in a mechanism that is well-thought out, it doesn't matter to us if players "power-game" that system.

 

At least, that's the feeling I've been getting from a lot of the posts here on this forum.

[kenup]

There is no powergaming problem. It's natural to want to make the most efficient build(among other things).

[jivex5k]

If people want to powergame...well let them.

Why would you try to limit how a person can play your game?

[Adhin]

Yeah jiv, that's actually the reasoning behind XP via progression/quests not kills. To open up play styles so folks don't feel the need to murder everything in sight for the sake of maximizing level growth. Which has nothing to do with limiting powergaming, just evening the playing field. Power Gamers will still do every quest to maximize there XP in take, I know I will.

[Hellfell]

The power gaming is okay but there shouldn't be only one obvious path to progress the most. In deus ex HR the only way to get most experience is to hack everything. I don't like hacking but if I want the most xp I just have to hack. That is what I do not want to see.

[jivex5k]

Yeah jiv, that's actually the reasoning behind XP via progression/quests not kills. To open up play styles so folks don't feel the need to murder everything in sight for the sake of maximizing level growth. Which has nothing to do with limiting powergaming, just evening the playing field. Power Gamers will still do every quest to maximize there XP in take, I know I will.

What playing field? It's a single player game.

[Zoraptor]

That would be levelling the playing field as in a player more focussed on diplomacy or other skills is not at an automatic disadvantage to someone focussed on Killing Stuff or vice/versa, I'd presume. That's pretty much irrelevant to power gaming per se, as if you allow alternative solutions you could make a powergamer diplomacy build, a powergamer monsta killa build, a powergaming stealth build or other types. I'd presume that what is being looked at is a way to encourage and reward efficient- but variable- character builds rather than specifically kill off powergaming except in its ludicrous extremes (18/18/18/3/3/3 stats with little to no negatives for the 3s, do quests then kill quest givers for extra XP, that sort of thing).

[Ignatius]

I believe these are the quotes from JE Sawyer that have sparked this thread and the power-gaming discussion in general.

 

Tim and I would rather not give XP for general killin' because it leads to a lot of weird/degenerate scenarios, but I have no problem with having quests oriented specifically around killing and receiving XP for achieving sub-objectives/the main goal.

 

Gameplay degeneration occurs when a player engages in gameplay not because they enjoy that gameplay but because the game's mechanics put the player at a disadvantage for not taking advantage of it. Rest spamming is one example. Wholesale slaughter/genocide is another. Quests that involve a peaceful option to resolve that get turned around after completion when the player murders the saved parties is a familiar expression of this sort of degeneration. If XP is linked to quests and objectives within quests, the player has much more freedom to resolve those quests in whatever way he or she wants, whether that means talking through it, fighting, sneaking around, or using some mixture of skills/scripted environment objects to reach the goal.

 

I think the original intent of this wasn't really to tackle power-gaming at all, but to balance the various approaches player's might consider. Anyway, it hasn't really been set into stone yet, but more a thought Tim and Sawyer had.

 

I honestly had no idea the whole do quest/kill quest giver thing was so prevalent in gaming. I imagine most people who are following this game treat their experience a little more seriously than that and have some role-playing obligation to maintain the integrity of their experience by not being a complete psychopath. But I guess this is stuff designers have to think about.

Edited October 22, 2012 by Ignatius

[The Guilty Party]

This is just a rephrased 'balance' discussion. Powergaming is just searching for the most unbalanced, powerful build and/or path through the game and taking that. To some extent, discussing it makes no sense in a single player game. You're not harming anyone by doing what you're doing, so do whatever the hell you want to. Enjoy yourself, cheat like crazy or try to finish the game naked. As long as you're having fun, you're fine.

 

Except ... that's not entirely true. It kind of sucks when you make character-building choices that are presented as reasonable (say, magic or technology, or strong fighter vs dextrous fighter) but one turns out to be vastly easier/more rewarding than the other. That's part of what they're talking about. So to the extent that they try to make all the options they give you viable options, and try to make sure the benefits of one option do not heavily outweigh the others, I think it's a good thing and makes a game both more fun and more replayable.

[jivex5k]

I think we can all agree that we want a balanced game.

Some players may find a loophole/exploit, the only way to stop that is with good QA and patches.

For a small budget game like this, I imagine the community will do a lot of QA.

[rjshae]

The player is always free to change the difficulty setting to Casual Gamer mode if they aren't into powergaming.

[Gromnir]

2 most common complaints we ever seen on message boards: 1) game were too easy, and 2) game were too difficult.

 

sadly, developers needs be concerned with overly easy powergame. why? developers lose when a significant % o' purchasers complain that a game were too easy. doesn't matter that reason for ease were nincompoop's powergame impulse. should it matter if player were at fault for making game too easy? sure, but that won't change fact that the player walks away from the game dissatisfied if they breeze through game. insane, no? is in developer's best interest to be paternalistic regarding powergame.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Hassat Hunter]

Like most, I don't care about powergaming (even if being accused so much of doing exactly that in the various XP-threads).

 

What I, and the OE devs care about? Allowing builds to be viable. Allowing quests, and the entire game to be properly roleplayable. To not gimp people who prefer talking and cheating. To prevent filler combat or "thrash mobs" as so many have gotten accustomed to, sadly enough.

[Amalaira]

Im going to weigh in here. I LOVE all the infinity engine games. BG2 is my favourite game of all time. I am also a powergamer. Any sort of cheese in these games chances are I have done it in 1 or more playthroughs. for example BG2

 

Feeblemind firkragg - Check

Cloudkill off screen - Check

Kensai mage solo - check

wiz slayer thief solo - check

multiple (3) rings of the ram - check

spell abuse (simulcrum, wish, projected image) - Check

Invis cheese with staff of magi - check.

scrolls of magic immunity - check

Using hasted totemic druid pets on mindflayers and then close the door while summons kill everything - check

 

And here is the interesting thing - IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!. Thats right. Alot of the fun I had in the old infinity engine games was figuring out fun and cheesy ways to beat encounters. I have probably played through BG2 at least 15 -20 times and loved every minute of it.

 

I sincerley hope that Project eternity does NOT limit powergaming (within reason) and allows players to play how they want to play!

[Kiarean]

Okay, sorry for not posting responses to the responses, kind forgot about this briefly (partly because it's a 'my 2 cents' kinda of post meant to get my general opinion out there). But I'm here now, and will try and clarify some of the things brought up.

 

Renamed Balance Issue - Yes and no. It's a separate issue as it doesn't deal with any of the game mechanics, stated or theorized. It's a purely storytelling issue.

 

Relativity- Tigranes brought up the point of this not having anything to do with powergaming, and to a point he's right. That's actually the entire idea, to separate story progression and mechanics so that powergaming from to break the game at large is pointless, while leaving the ability to try and break the mechanics for those who enjoy that. I have a friend myself who has stated that he enjoys that.

 

The Point - Then there are those of you bringing up the point of why something like this is even an issue. The answer is to eliminate the belief that there is an optimum path; rather than approaching each encounter from a perspective of what will give you the optimal benefit like some rpgs fall prey to, or making the path to the goal irrelevant like pure balance might (See - Mass Effect 3), you make it so that your choices are about the kind of story you want to tell and what effect that has on the world... in other words, a matter of roleplaying.

[Hormalakh]

I really don't see a problem with power-gaming Many of you don't really understand what power-gaming is. It's creating a character that's the best and most efficient for the job. Of course we could put a stop to this, but what will be the consequences? If every character would be equal than char creation become obsolete. The problem starts when you cannot complete or play comfortably a game with other builds. But that doesn't mean that ANY build can equally efficient finish the game.

 

Example: the power-gamer creating fighter will do the math and conclude that the best damage dealer would be a dwarf wielding two-handed sword with max strength and condition for dmg and stamina and only combat skills. If the game is designed good than this would be the best build, but not the only one capable of finishing the game. For example the human shield+sword that have a high (not maxed out) strength and condition plus some intelligence or wisdom and a few non combat skills should also be capable of filling the role of a decent fighter as this is a reasonable build. However if the player creates a fighter with minimum strength and maxed out charisma and wisdom and having only non combat skills he should have trouble in a fight!

 

So considering all that the game should:

a) Acknowledge the one reasonable build being better or worse than another, but not vastly inferior

b) Allow all reasonable builds to successfully play and finish the game

c) Acknowledge not reasonable builds as inferior and punish the character for lacking in essential class requirements

 

The problem I think isn't that there shouldn't be efficient builds, it's that in an RPG you would want many (not infinite) different kinds of builds, all of which either complement each other, or are just as efficient as other builds. The problem lies in limiting builds to only 1 or 2. In your example, would you call an RPG a good one if the only viable fighter build was a dwarf as you described? I wouldn't call that game an RPG, I'd call it an action game. What's the point of building your own character if there's only one "most efficient" build? There shouldn't be unlimited builds, but with strategy and thought, you should have a good number of "most efficient" builds in any RPG. That makes the game worth playing again and again.

 

Edit: Grammar

Edited October 24, 2012 by Hormalakh