Solution for random chance events and reloads

[Nerei]

Here's an example. After considering your thieving skill including any buffs etc. and the difficulty level of the lock it is determined that you have a 70% chance in succeeding to pick a certain lock. You go ahead and attempt to pick it. The game rolls a number between 0-100 and produces 20. Sad panda face. (You needed to roll 30 or greater to unlock a 70% lock) The game then saves the number you rolled(20) and remembers it for the entire play-through. That's the part what this whole thread is about. So trying the same lock after any amount of reloading will always produce the roll of 20. You could also return to this lock at a later time when your skills have improved or have better gear, and attempt it again. This time let's say because your skills have improved you have a 90% chance to crack it (needs a roll of 10 or greater). Your initial rather sucky roll is now sufficient to open the lock. Hooray~!

I'm not entirely sure whether improvement in skill should grant a new roll or not. From a role playing standpoint it seems like it should re-roll once a character attempts the check with his/her new found skills. Those are minor details though.

 

I am still going to stick with:

 

Make the game so I do not want to or do not feel the need to reload, not a game where it is hard to reload.

 

What you have in that example is still just a restriction, nothing more nothing less. If I feel the game is unfair to me I will still want to reload. That has not changed at all, what you have changed is my ability to do so. You are not making the game "fair" (definition of fair is open to debate), neither are you taking away my need (be it imaginary or not) to reload.

If we want to reduce the amount of reloading in the game, lets look at the source of the problem, the skill system (or game mechanics as a whole), not the seed used by it.

Fallout 3 and New Vegas are nice examples of games with nearly no reason to reload due to skillchecks, if the system is good is another story but that to me feels like the place to start.

 

I still can not ever remember having seen a seed system that made me less interested in reloading. It might make it too hard forcing me to find another route or give up, but is either of those good results?

Actually the seed system in games like Xcom 2012 can make me more prone to reloading, just so the AI gets the next 5 horrible seed values and not me. I have friends that swear to that strategy. For them the seed is just a different reason to reload.

 

The odds are also that there quickly will be some way around it, effectively making it useless. Odds of there not being tools like gatekeeper (an easy way to skip things like skillchecks) are fairly slim, and likely also a console which could mean I do not even need the 3rd party tool. Should those fail I can probably use some ram cheat tool.

 

Sorry if I (or someone else) have said some of this before but I still do not see how saving the seed will in any way help with making me less prone to reloading except by making it too hard for me to bother. To me it still basically feels like a multiplayer anti-cheat tool coerced into a new role. As an option fair enough, but then there is already ironman as a closely related and confirmed feature.

[TrashMan]

Best not tempat a man...remove the temptation.

 

If a man cannot get a better result by reloading, he won't be tempted to do so.

[Kaz]

@Umberlin I'll get to a response when I get a chance, but in the meantime could you go over my old post and answer some questions I pose? Not trying to corner you or anything, just confused since my idea shouldn't really affect the way you play, yet you seem to be in strong opposition. Thanks

 

The proposed idea does not affect the majority of players who accept the initial check / roll and move on. The only change you'd notice is the fact that results of random checks remain consistent between reloads. Regardless of this being a single player role playing game, or nebulous things like will power, I just see a loophole in a game and throwing out ideas to patch it in a non intrusive way. What is the issue with that? And specifically what is your play-style you insist on protecting and how am I impeding on it? Help me out so I can understand where you're coming from.

[Dream]

The proposed idea does not affect the majority of players who accept the initial check / roll and move on. The only change you'd notice is the fact that results of random checks remain consistent between reloads. Regardless of this being a single player role playing game, or nebulous things like will power, I just see a loophole in a game and throwing out ideas to patch it in a non intrusive way. What is the issue with that? And specifically what is your play-style you insist on protecting and how am I impeding on it? Help me out so I can understand where you're coming from.

 

I'm gonna take a guess here and say that there are far more players who would be bothered by not being able to reload a skill check than those who would prefer to not reload after a skill check but don't have the will power to resist doing so and end up hating themselves for it. So if you truly want to cater to the majority then the optimal solution would be... the one that's been in place for the past two decades.

Edited November 28, 2012 by Dream

[Jajo]

• Roll seed locking negatively affects playstyle of some players and does not affect play style of other players. On average it affects play styles negatively. Is this then a good idea (please, don't answer this, it's a rhetorical question and I've read enough condescending and patronizing posts for today)?
  
• You started a discussion about a solution to a particular problem. How is discussing, whether the proposed solution is an even bigger problem, not on topic?
  
• For a solution to a problem, there first has to be a problem. What you're proposing is a solution for something, that is not self-evidently a problem. You're saying, that you want to understand the other side of the argument (It's simple - it's allowing people to play how they want), yet you don't provide your side of the argument at all. Why are you bothered about how other people are playing a single player game? Why even propose solutions for problems that do not affect you at all, but you know will affect some other people negatively?
  

[sociosqu]

I just jumped into ths thread this morning and read about the 'my playstyle is my castle' position vs. 'consequence is an essence of rpg'.

Well, it might sound offensive but I dont' mean it that way.

Did anybody consider a 'minigame' when a savegame younger than e.g. 30mins is loaded? (There's another very big thread about minigames already)

This doesn't keep anybody from playing the reload-playstyle but let's the player propably think twice to do a risky action or to reload, since there's more of a consequence, especially when the minigame is not entertaining.

 

I myself use the 'reload spell' quite often, I admit, and because of this I sometimes feel I am missing atmosphere when all enemies already have lost by desgin. The 'reload spell' is overpowering everything.

Edited November 29, 2012 by sociosqu

[Nerei]

I just jumped into ths thread this morning and read about the 'my playstyle is my castle' position vs. 'consequence is an essence of rpg'.

Well, it might sound offensive but I dont' mean it that way.

Did anybody consider a 'minigame' when a savegame younger than e.g. 30mins is loaded? (There's another very big thread about minigames already)

This doesn't keep anybody from playing the reload-playstyle but let's the player propably think twice to do a risky action or to reload, since there's more of a consequence, especially when the minigame is not entertaining.

 

I myself use the 'reload spell' quite often, I admit, and because of this I sometimes feel I am missing atmosphere when all enemies already have lost by desgin. The 'reload spell' is overpowering everything.

 

Personally I am not too much for minigames. If they are optional and fit into the world as a whole and at least are moderately fun (and does not take too many resources from the core game) fine, but mandatory minigames please no. That is not to say I dislike them as such, I just rarely play them. One of the few I liked was pazzak, it was fast, moderately fun and within lore of the game. I would however be irritated if I had to play pazzak 5-10 times in a row, which could happen in such a system even if I was not constantly reloading to get a successful roll.

A hard part of the game could result in me dying regularly and thus would also trigger it.

 

If there where to be a penalty like this I would rather go with the style that New Vegas (IIRC) had where you could not play in the casino for something like 1 minute after reloading. A similar system could be made for skillchecks. That is not to say I liked it, but I would prefer it over many other options.

[Cryticus]

One, thing first why bother OP?

You say that because re-loading players that are honorable will gain less than thouse who reload, but P:E is supposed to be purly Single player game, no rankings , no score points, no multiplayer, if someone re-loads then really they make their expierence of game, better or worst only for themselves , it will in no way affect someone who don't reloads.

And besides P:E is supposed to be homage to the rpgs of old, and in that days reloading was perfectly sound way to win, often almost mandatory

[sociosqu]

I just jumped into ths thread this morning and read about the 'my playstyle is my castle' position vs. 'consequence is an essence of rpg'.

Well, it might sound offensive but I dont' mean it that way.

Did anybody consider a 'minigame' when a savegame younger than e.g. 30mins is loaded? (There's another very big thread about minigames already)

This doesn't keep anybody from playing the reload-playstyle but let's the player propably think twice to do a risky action or to reload, since there's more of a consequence, especially when the minigame is not entertaining.

 

I myself use the 'reload spell' quite often, I admit, and because of this I sometimes feel I am missing atmosphere when all enemies already have lost by desgin. The 'reload spell' is overpowering everything.

 

Personally I am not too much for minigames. If they are optional and fit into the world as a whole and at least are moderately fun (and does not take too many resources from the core game) fine, but mandatory minigames please no. That is not to say I dislike them as such, I just rarely play them. One of the few I liked was pazzak, it was fast, moderately fun and within lore of the game. I would however be irritated if I had to play pazzak 5-10 times in a row, which could happen in such a system even if I was not constantly reloading to get a successful roll.

A hard part of the game could result in me dying regularly and thus would also trigger it.

 

If there where to be a penalty like this I would rather go with the style that New Vegas (IIRC) had where you could not play in the casino for something like 1 minute after reloading. A similar system could be made for skillchecks. That is not to say I liked it, but I would prefer it over many other options.

 

The point is: Not liking minigames indeed IS the point. It's all about making some sort of investment by the player. Just imagine you think about to open a chest with your mage, but you don't know if it is trapped ... Today you just try. Error means reload. There is no need to sacrifice some spell-slot or magic energy on a 'find trap' spell. Now think about you have to play a very small, probably boring, minigame that maybe justs take 20seconds before reloading. How do you react? Likely you will make the investment for the spell to avoid that bloody minigame. am I right? I think that adds to the story of roleplaying experience when you don't always have the perfect character(s) which can do everything.

It would help the less disciplined people, who want to do this kind of roleplaying but can't resist the temptation, be more disciplined. Like myself .

For those who are just annoyed by this simple thing, it could be easily diabled in the options.

 

There are many games that increas in fun when the player has to make a personal investment ... Poker for an instance ;-) So it is not very unusual.

 

Just by the way: Minigames inside the game .. I am also no fan of that..

Edited November 29, 2012 by sociosqu

[Lephys]

I'm going to briefly address the "why not let people play however they want?" argument. It's not really even about whether or not Player A should be able to do something different than what Player B did. It's the principle of what it is they're doing, and the fact that it's bypassing something that was not intended to be bypassed. If you build a storage shed and put a deadbolt on the door, but then find that one of the sections of wall allows people to walk straight through it, then it doesn't matter if you're talking about someone who is allowed in that shed or not getting in through that quantumly-defective wall. The fact of the matter is, you specifically put time and resources into building that shed so that the door with the lock was the only way to enter it.

 

The only reason there is to prevent such a thing is the fact that it is completely unintentional for it to exist in the first place. If you made a painkiller that sometimes CAUSED more pain, you wouldn't say "Well, this one patient who's taking it LIKES pain. Therefore there's no reason to worry about it."

 

That being said, I don't think there's really a reasonable way to fix such holes right now. And even on the notion of the random quest/story branches being locked to each playthrough (which I personally expressed support for earlier in the thread), I acknowledge the negative effects of doing so and am not suggesting that it should DEFINITELY be done. I suppose the best way to handle that right now might be to allow people to pretty much pick their branch at such forks, having been informed a little ways up the road what choices will lead to which no-turning-back branches. That completely eliminates any reason for reloading to circumvent the path you didn't want, AND makes sure you don't get locked into the same branches on the same quests on multiple playthroughs.

 

As for the "play a minigame to deter reloading," I don't see that serving any purpose other than delaying your reload. A delay can be achieved without a minigame, which is why this would be one use for minigames I am wholeheartedly against. It's counterproductive to spend time implementing something inherently designed for enjoyment, SOLELY for the purposes of its ability to delay your game reload.

[Nerei]

I'm going to briefly address the "why not let people play however they want?" argument. It's not really even about whether or not Player A should be able to do something different than what Player B did. It's the principle of what it is they're doing, and the fact that it's bypassing something that was not intended to be bypassed. If you build a storage shed and put a deadbolt on the door, but then find that one of the sections of wall allows people to walk straight through it, then it doesn't matter if you're talking about someone who is allowed in that shed or not getting in through that quantumly-defective wall. The fact of the matter is, you specifically put time and resources into building that shed so that the door with the lock was the only way to enter it.

 

The only reason there is to prevent such a thing is the fact that it is completely unintentional for it to exist in the first place. If you made a painkiller that sometimes CAUSED more pain, you wouldn't say "Well, this one patient who's taking it LIKES pain. Therefore there's no reason to worry about it."

 

That being said, I don't think there's really a reasonable way to fix such holes right now. And even on the notion of the random quest/story branches being locked to each playthrough (which I personally expressed support for earlier in the thread), I acknowledge the negative effects of doing so and am not suggesting that it should DEFINITELY be done. I suppose the best way to handle that right now might be to allow people to pretty much pick their branch at such forks, having been informed a little ways up the road what choices will lead to which no-turning-back branches. That completely eliminates any reason for reloading to circumvent the path you didn't want, AND makes sure you don't get locked into the same branches on the same quests on multiple playthroughs.

 

As for the "play a minigame to deter reloading," I don't see that serving any purpose other than delaying your reload. A delay can be achieved without a minigame, which is why this would be one use for minigames I am wholeheartedly against. It's counterproductive to spend time implementing something inherently designed for enjoyment, SOLELY for the purposes of its ability to delay your game reload.

 

How are you bypassing something that you where not meant to be able to do? Reloading a savegame and trying again will in no way at all allow you to do something you where not allowed to do in the first place.

All it means is you get an additional chance at the exact same scenario you tried before unless you actively change something. Indeed given that it is pretty irrelevant to talk about people that are not allowed to enter your shed considering that they do not exist in that scenario. Really they also have a key to the door.

Reloading is in no way different than being lucky the first time you tried.

 

As for your painkiller scenario you are right off assuming that people reloading savegames to get the result they want is a bad thing, it might be an inefficient way but it is not bad unless you want to make it that. Do I consider it bad when I do it? not really. You might consider it bad but that just means there is no consensus on it.

 

Rolling 20 on a 20 sided dice 200 billion times is possible, insanely unlikely but possible, reloading savegames is really just the player trying to help the system get such an unlikely scenario.

Reloading a saved game and trying again will never allow you to do something you could not do the first time had luck been with you unless the game is broken in other ways!

 

 

It should also be said that all the IE games except planescape have include a console (some of the other games referenced on the kickstarter like NWN2 or ToEE also included it). If you want to talk about principles then they should not really give players a hydrogen bomb to play with and then complain about them playing with firecrackers. Then there is the trainers, savegame editors (both likely to appear at some point) and ramcheat tools, that is our black market WMD's in that scenario. The firecrackers would be the last thing I would worry about if the goal is to maintain the principles of purity.

 

 

I still do not see why a game developer should dictate how I play a game that I have paid for unless it affects someone else that also uses that product. The world of games is one of the places where I really want to be free from people telling me what to do, I got people doing that all day. Again if it affect other people I can naturally accept it, but in this case it is a game that is unlikely to even include any degree of multiplayer.

Having people dictate my playstyle at that level to me just feels a bit too much like someone read 1984 and liked the ideas it proposed a bit too much.

[Jajo]

I'm going to briefly address the "why not let people play however they want?" argument. It's not really even about whether or not Player A should be able to do something different than what Player B did. It's the principle of what it is they're doing, and the fact that it's bypassing something that was not intended to be bypassed. If you build a storage shed and put a deadbolt on the door, but then find that one of the sections of wall allows people to walk straight through it, then it doesn't matter if you're talking about someone who is allowed in that shed or not getting in through that quantumly-defective wall. The fact of the matter is, you specifically put time and resources into building that shed so that the door with the lock was the only way to enter it.

 

The only reason there is to prevent such a thing is the fact that it is completely unintentional for it to exist in the first place. If you made a painkiller that sometimes CAUSED more pain, you wouldn't say "Well, this one patient who's taking it LIKES pain. Therefore there's no reason to worry about it."

These are some strange analogies, but ok.

If i get this correctly, the reason behind players (shed visitors) aking for save scumming option to be removed is actually consideration towards developers (shed proprietors), who will supposedly mournfully look at the door while some people are climbing through the (quantum?) window, because the lock is sometimes stubborn and it's just easier and less frustrating to go through the (quantum??) window to enjoy the awesome shed that they've built.

One I find much easier to understand is this: Should table tennis ball manufacturers cover their balls with laxatives to prevent people from playing beer pong?

I'd also like to see some developer quotes supporting your claims of what is or what is not intentional. Save scumming is not a well guarded dirty little secret. It's as old as the games themselves and I'm sure that developers are well aware of it. Claiming that something so well known is not in the game by chioce is naive or intentinally misleading.

 

As for the "play a minigame to deter reloading," I don't see that serving any purpose other than delaying your reload. A delay can be achieved without a minigame, which is why this would be one use for minigames I am wholeheartedly against. It's counterproductive to spend time implementing something inherently designed for enjoyment, SOLELY for the purposes of its ability to delay your game reload.

The purpose of the delay is to delay the reload. The purpose of the minigame is to alleviate the frustration with the delay.

I'm against them anyway, since I'm against this limiting players on the whole.

Edited November 30, 2012 by Jajo

[Lephys]

You both misunderstood me to a degree (perhaps because I did not explain well enough. I'm not trying to be pompous here.)

 

If you implement a system that is intentionally designed to take advantage of chance to determine an outcome (any outcome whatsoever), then the only way chance comes into play is if chance determines that outcome. i.e. 3 options are possible, but only 1 can ultimately occur at a time. If chance decides which one occurs, then that chosen outcome is left in place and the game is continued, then there was a difference between chance selecting the outcome and the player picking the outcome. The fact that you can simply save before letting chance roll its dice, then reload your game LITERALLY negates any effects or purpose of chance picking anything in the first place. By reloading until you get a certain outcome, you are literally picking your outcome, only in an unnecessarily inefficient manner.

 

It's not that "you shouldn't be able to pick something." It's that, IF you should be able to pick something, then you should simply be able to pick it. If you go to a merchant, why should he sell you a random item when you just want a sword and he has a sword in-stock? Allowing a dice roll to determine which item the merchant gives you for your money is utterly ridiculous, and serves only to arbitrarily delay the item-purchasing process.

 

So, what I'm saying is, if the player is ultimately allowed to choose the outcome (however annoyingly inefficiently), then the purpose of the chance-roll making selections is 100% useless and should not even exist. It is counter-productive; a waste of resources. That's what I'm saying. If you've decided to have chance choose instead of the player, but you let the player ultimately choose anyway, then you have failed in your design goal.

 

Whether or not the player should be allowed to choose something is a COMPLETELY separate argument, and is based on a ton of other factors. I'm not even addressing that decision here.

 

These are some strange analogies, but ok.

 

Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm aware that my brain doesn't always supply me with the best analogy ammunition. They tend to always make sense in a way, but often only in a way that I wouldn't expect the person who didn't think them up to understand. I'm sorry about that, heh.

Edited November 30, 2012 by Lephys

[Lephys]

It was done good in NWN, you always rolled 20 on skill checks outside of combat.

 

See, I'm sure that was done simply because it was easier from a programming standpoint than removing the roll altogether. But, obviously, the fact that the roll was always 20 completely defeats the purpose of the roll in the first place. The only value of a dice roll is that it can possibly turn up any one value within a range of values.

[Nerei]

Could also be that it is based on D&D 3rd edition and that game included a mechanic called "taking 20"

Basically it means that in a situation where you can continually repeat a check you will eventually get 20 on the D20 (just like repeatedly trying to unlock a door in BG where if you can succeed you sooner or later will if you roll a good enough result, here it is just automated). It does not do it for say pickpocketing, even if it is outside combat as it is a skill where you cannot casually repeat it.

Also you could still fail out of combat actions if the check was higher than 20 + you skill, try recovering a deadly trap, the check is something close to 50.

Technically according to the p&p rules it also takes 20 times as long, something NWN did not simulate.

 

Having something along the lines of this mechanic would be fine with me, it would also make sense that if I take my time I would be able to get a better idea of how to solve the problem. That is actually also a reasons why I dislike the locking the seed approach to things like lockpicking. I prevents simulation of such a scenario unless it always assume I take 20 minutes picking a lock.

 

 

That said I will still say that having the "option" to reload and try again does not mean that the RNG the game comes with has been taken out of action and the player dictates the outcome. For one the people that does not reload it will work just as it has always done. Only to the people that do it will it have less effect.

 

You also got a problem if you implement such the mechanic like you suggest.

Going back to the pickpocketing, using that logic if I have any chance of succes it should always succeed. For the people reloading that is great, more power to them. For those that do not they suddenly have a 100% succes rate they might not like. I remember playing some well-made rogue/city adventure modules for NWN where one of the mechanics for pickpocketing was if it failed you should run, hide and wait for the danger to pass. I really liked that, it made sense that the entire city was not out for my blood due to the 2 coins I stole.

Being able to casually rob the 2 major towns blind at first level would be a pretty terrible design.

Edited December 1, 2012 by Nerei

[Game_Exile]

Design and balance the game as if people wont be saving/reloading for best results.

This is the obvious answer. Balance the game around no reloads, or reloads restricted to checkpoints. If you want long range strategic choices in your game, then it makes sense to have no reloads or checkpoints that are far from each other so you have some semblance of challenge. It's the same reason why older CRPGs like Baldur's Gate didn't allow you to save in the middle of combat. Hopefully in P:E the rest of the game outside of combat will have a lot more strategic depth (which will be connected to combat of course), making exploration/story decisions/etc. more meaningful and interesting.

[Ninjamestari]

I don't see any reason to waste productive time and brainpower into something as trivial as this.