Sawyerism and High-Level Design

[Tamerlane]

I've got a suggestion for Obsidian (please don't read this as pedantic insistance on a universal truth on how info is absorbed): when the game is playable in parts, take it into a school and have 20 or so kids play it (preferably 16yrs plus) and if the school is open to the concept, treat it as an 'enhancement activity' on learning styles for each learner. Try and get an advanced practicioner to help evaluate the results (they're the guys that advise teachers and assure quality) and obviously draw as much from it as possible.

 

Then disregard half of all info recieved and don't let it impose on/corrupt your instincts as developers. *Waives all responsibility*.

 

One example I'm familiar with - if someone's crap at maths, they might disregard THACO. They might have a barrier to learning (10 years of being told they're crap at maths by crap teachers and believing it), they'll just look at the wall of text in the manual and switch off - so as JE Sawyer mentioned, the developer might have to facilitate this 'back door method' (industry term for me) of relaying the information without the person initially relating it to what their doing, e.g. IE game player identifies THACO going down on character sheet, relates that to going up in levels, then sees +2 sword reduce it further, wonders if it's a bug and reads in the manual/forum that less is more - then makes the link to fighter+mage THACO difference on character sheet.

 

So if I had to explain that game mechanic to someone who hated maths, I'd treat it as a long term outcome based on their experience with the game and initially make sure they appreciate 'less is more, fighters advance chance to hit +1 per level' as even a 5-20 min in-game tutorial on the subject would likely be as off putting as the manual.

How about colour coding stats so it's apparent when something is good, mediocre or bad, or even excellent.

That way, even if you don't care about figuring out the stats, you can see at a glance on your character sheet what your strengths and weaknesses are.

 

That would be idiot proof, maybe. I liked the str explanations in 2nd edition (hill giant etc) and the stat descriptions in planescape, they help me put my character in context.

- Related to that; I was reading the Forbes review of BG:EE during which the reviewer hated bears that appear and 1 shot you (I didn't get that). So I asked my 4 year old nephew whether I should shoot a bear from a distance or run up to it and bash it in melee, he replied: "You should run away really fast, because bears have claws and teeth and stuff and if they hit you you might die because they're really stwong". At that point I had to wonder who was the more capable gamer (between nephew and Forbes reviewer) assuming the latter appreciated HP, low level characters, etc.

So maybe that reviewer would actually need a big red sign floating above the bear stating: I'm dangerous and you should really think about your options before resorting to melee.

Side-matter that has nothing to do with the topic at hand:

 

It always bugged me how god damn slow the bears in BG were. Bears are really ****ing fast. Like, way faster than you or me. And I don't know where the myth that they can't run downhill came from, because they can.

 

I've basically got a stick up my ass about how wolves and bears are portrayed in videogames, really.

 

Resume regular conversation.

[Lephys]

It always bugged me how god damn slow the bears in BG were. Bears are really ****ing fast. Like, way faster than you or me. And I don't know where the myth that they can't run downhill came from, because they can.

 

They should bearly be able to catch you, as opposed to barely being able to catch you?

[Karkarov]

It always bugged me how god damn slow the bears in BG were. Bears are really ****ing fast. Like, way faster than you or me. And I don't know where the myth that they can't run downhill came from, because they can.

 

They should bearly be able to catch you, as opposed to barely being able to catch you?

Don't knock him man. He is just trying to make sure the mechanics he considers to be bear necessities are in game.

[Hormalakh]

Well, I'm glad my thread ran its course. But honestly, I just can't bear this any longer.

Pun intended.

Edited December 14, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Maltry]

Just a couple of thoughts to chip in here. The first is that while good tutorials, setup, and a grasp of the basics are all very excellet things, the OP begins by invalidating Sawyer's point. I'm not a developer (except for a couple of home-grown table-top systems more for fun than general consumption), but I have been testing games for a couple/few years and I've supervised groups of testers. The basic reality is, even if people understand the system just fine (or extremely well through massive variant repitition) things can and will slip past. It's happened to me, happened to my testers, happened to my family and friends while just playing normally. Now, one side of this is just that it's another part of the game, you snooze you lose kinda thing, and that's fine for people that do want to play that way. Josh specifically addresses this by mentioning people who really will play as hard as they say they will. But honestly, I don't find it more interesting personally to penalize myself for accidentally chosing a different option than I intended, for missing a line or I'll admit it, even an entire block of text. And the longer and more interesting a game is, the more likely people are to make this kind of error. Yes, it's a challenge to make it through the game with the challenge of never making a wrong choice, never missing a trick, or facing the music. But, it's a challenge that really isn't enjoyable for some people. As a tabletop GM I don't allow people to change their words when they don't get the response they want, but I do allow it when it's obvious they just misunderstood the situation. Now you ask what happens when giving players a way to correct their absent minded mistakes makes the game a worse experience for other players, I think in the vast majority of instances this is a false dichotomy. Creating an auto-save at the point of no return doesn't compel players to use it, and in every instance that I'm aware of where the devs are trying to make these exceptions, they are putting in the options to *not* have those exceptions made for you. You don't ruin a game by putting in an easy or hard mode, you expand the breadth of people who are able to enjoy it, the same principle applies here.

 

My second point is somewhat related to the first. At what point does the transparency of mechanics affect enjoyment? This needn't be about hand-holding, but simply about seeing what you are doing more precicely, and seeing the responsiveness of the world to your character. I'll use the converstation tag as my first example, and I'll state my bias up front, because I'm in favor of conversation tags both for source and context. Conversation tags are very simple things, all they do is state either why you are given a conversation option, or specify what that conversation option really means. In many games they are an 'I win' option, which has been specifically stated is something the devs want to avoid. So what do they do? They provide extra information, extra content, or a minor advantage based on the abilities and experiences of your character. I for one find it extremely satisfying to see an tag on a conversation option because it reinfoces the idea that my character matters. I'm not a cardboard cutout, but rather who I am plays a role in what I can do. Not only that, but it provides more feedback when these tags cause an unexpected response. If I take that Int option and it causes a backlash then maybe I wasn't nearly as clever as I thought I was, or I realize that I came across as condescending. Now, some conversation options can be fairly obvious in their source, but many are not. Not to the player that is, but barring some exceptions involving self-awareness, arrogance, etc. a *character* should know the source of their own words in a in-world sense. Not, 'my [blank] score tells me so' but rather 'Hah! I totally just had this cool thought' or 'Hey... guns/swords/wagons don't work that way.' It increases immersion for me to see the impact all these things make. An alternate version of tags is to clarify their meaning, such as tags that mark truth or lies, differentiate the [menacing] "Your shop is full of valuable things, are you sure their safe from all the theives roaming the streets at night?" threat from the [concerned] "Your shop is full of valuable things, are you sure their safe from all the theives roaming the streets at night?" offer of help. If I want to help the merchant, noting is more immersion-breaking that having my character outright threaten him instead. Having to guess at the source and meaning of your character's words might be interesting to some people, but to me it's just boring, it makes the game more bland rather than less, and reduces the overal feel of responsiveness.

 

We can apply this same principle to buffs, perhaps not directly to the example Sawyer gave but as a general hypothetical. If you were to remove all buff icons in the game, that would certainly make it more challenging. You would have to time your buffs, watch for subtle visual cues, read all the combat text for listed modifiers if available, or some other means of knowing when to recast them. That also might be fun for some people, but again it would subtract from the game for me. In short, I think that there are many different issues in play here, covering both potential player failure as well as preferred gamestyle. Teaching people well is a good answer to some of them, but it doesn't invalidate their design decisions, and isn't a template for making all players enjoy playing the same way.

[Hormalakh]

@Maltry Thanks for your thoughts.

 

1- I find that having some sort of in-game reference where you can review what dialogue has been said, or looking at the mechanics should be helpful. I'm not sure if this game will do this, but I have heard other players singing the praises of games like ToEE where there was an in-game reference for D&D mechanics. Yes, people might miss things I understand that. But don't punish other players who didn't miss things by forcing the knowledge own everyone's throat. Make the references available and those who need it can go and find it.

 

2- If people made a decision without having all the information, while it does sound frustrating to have made a mistake, I think it should be OK and players should be willing to live with their mistakes. Misunderstanding and incomplete information are realities of life as well. We do the best we can. With a video game it's even more different than a taple-top game with a DM. The rules are static: if you allow for repeats and "undos," it's a slippery slope you walk on before other gamers take advantage of those "undo" buttons and claim that the devs placed them in the game, and so -even if the dev didn't intend for them to be used that way- that it's silly to not play without those "undos" as if they're in-game mechanics. This can lead to unbalanced or easy games. Save-scumming would be an example.

 

3- Your tag and buff examples are interesting, but I have yet to see a developer place [tags] where they were not the best choice for a player. This whole [tag] is an example of meta-gaming anyway. All it does is allows the gamer to see the cogs turning behind the wheel. It can feel immersion-breaking or even be used to "meta-game" the game to victory. In either case, an option that turns them off would allow me to play without breaking from immersion and I do care about that more than anythign else.

[Maltry]

I guess I'll go in order of your arguments here Hormalakh.

 

1. You are still referencing two separate concepts as I mentioned before, and if we are indeed talking about game design theory your argument is internally inconsistent. I don't think anyone here is arguing that people shouldn't have a tutorial and then be able to access and expand on that knowledge to operate within the game. If done correctly that is the essence of keeping players informed and engaged. But you then go on to say that once people are informed of the basic concepts they should then be deprived of the knowledge of what is happening around and to them, It's like teaching someone to swim and then injecting them with anesthetic so they can't feel their limbs. Sure they know how, but have no context, no feedback from their actions. As far as punishing people who don't want to have that information, it's been made equally clear that Sawyer at the least has every intention of letting people who don't want the feedback to remove it.

 

2. Here I'm not sure which aspect you are talking about honestly. If it's about the idea of the end game 'point of no return' popup and save then I can see your argument to a certain extent, you missed the message so you aren't allowed to go back and finish all those quests you wanted. I see it, I just don't agree with it. Sure missing out on a bunch of game content is a penalty for not paying attention, but what's the point of that penalty? It's not there to make the experience more challenging or interesting, it's just a massive 'whoops, now I have to start over'. That's saving real live boredom, not in-game consequence.

 

3. I can think of a fair number of examples where tags don't tell you what the 'best' option is. The first is one Sawyer mentioned specifically in fallout 2, the empathy skill applied tags that allowed you to see your subjects response. Those tags did not define the choice you wanted, just gave you some context. Neverwinter Nights 2 (and MotB) had a fair number of conversation options based off stats that had no effect other than to alter your exact dialogue path, most notably wisdom. There were also instances of failing conversation checks and causing the outcome to be worse than it would have been otherwise, and you didn't know previous to picking the option whether you would pass or fail. Fallout New Vegas, especially Dead Money, had conversation options again where all you would get was a small amount more exposition, or some really minor benefit. And one of the best examples of how being too clever for your own good can come back and bite you in Dead Money passing a skill check with the companion Dean Domino would ensure that he turned hostile to you at the end of the game, you had proven yourself to be a rival through it's use. Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines also had several times where the special options were not necessarily the right ones, depending on you intended goals. Sometimes there were simple social gaffs, other times they would lock out dialogue or result in needless deaths (which might have been what you were going for but might not). I definitely think that the potential downsides of social manipulations have been largely played down, but they have been used, and with the stated express intention to play up that aspect of the game I expect them to be used even more here.

 

I am well aware the these tags are a form of metagaming, which is precisely why I brought up the buff example. It's exactly the same kind of metagaming. Keeping you the player informed of what your character is doing. And I get that it breaks immersion for you, as I stated before it has exactly the opposite effect for me. Since we already know that they're working to include the lack of such tags and other type of information in Expert mode you already have the potential to do what you want. And your arguments seem to be directed toward pushing the game away from players having a choice in how they want to play.

 

Edit: I apologize, on the first line I should have said that your argument reads as internally inconsistent to me, because I believe that theoretical knowledge of how the mechanics work, and being able to watch them work, is part of the same stream of information. Believe it or not I do understand where you're coming from with the 'teach it and then get out of the way once we have the tools', I just don't agree or find it fun is all.

Edited December 15, 2012 by Maltry