Degenerate Gameplay

[UpgrayeDD]

I may be a bit more of a game design geek than most people, since I am a software designer myself. As such, I am irritated no end by design flaws, and perhaps for that very reason I tend to notice them... and then get caught in the ensuing degenerate strategies.

I find it rather Ironic that you claim to be so perceptive about noticing things in games and fail to see that the quest/objective xp only system handing out equal rewards would not be rewarding the avoidance of combat/conflict.

[Hassat Hunter]

: Hence people who like their jobs refuse to get paid for it and instead get moneyz by doing side quests.

Ehm, no... they just get paid A LOAN (goal completion, or usually, a month work), instead of PER HOUR (per kill).

 

Do you have a great post on how loans are bad and everyone should be paid by the hour or everyone stops working? I would love to read it...

I'm pretty sure you mean a pay check for a pay period. However how much you recieve is still determed by how much work you did. Worker A builds a wall and it takes him 32 hours of work to do. Worker B builds a wall thats bigger and it takes him 40 hours to do so. Guess who got paid more?

I think my example flew over most people... so let's say it clearly...

 

You aren't paid PER HOUR. You don't get each hour amount of money donated at your account (per kill).

At the end of month your effort is set into money. Once. That's your loan. Or in this case, that would be "quest-XP".

 

If you spend 32 hours you get less quest XP than 40 hours, indeed. That's why bigger missions give bigger rewards. Or more difficult ones give bigger rewards.

But there's no need to instead of pay once at the end of that 32 hour pay the employee 32 seperate times. Because otherwise he stops working. Since that gives "no reward"...

[JFSOCC]

The best way to handle the situation is to give ~800 Exp for "dealing with the orc band" and 150~200 spread among the band. There would be no benifet in talking and then killing which is what has Prime's panties in a twist. You'd still get a huge chunk of the total experience you could have gotten from the encounter. And with how big the game is going to be there should be more then enough encounters to hit cap with out needing those bits here and there that your risk avoiding lost you

except until a player gets there he'll have no idea how much he has yet to gain. XP at some early point in the game will always be preferable to the risk, because you can reload.

Unless you're playing in ironman mode in which case avoiding combat is king and the best way to proceed. But in normal play if you lose a character yeah theres always the reload and if you find its too tough then you can always sneak or talk through(which are the paths of least resistance). Once you make the rewards equal(or near enough) for all paths Most people(not all) will opt for the easiest path.

easy for them. that's the thing, some people are better at combat, others are better at dialogue.

[Kaz]

This is essentially what has been proposed by the devs, with the only difference being combat XP rewarded on the spot. Players can mix and match when to sneak/fight and gain the same amount of XP when all is said and done.

 

 

No. There is no kill experience whatsoever.

 

Sigh.

 

This could be a way to support alternative styles of questing while retaining combat XP.

 

1. A quest is allotted a pot of XP which is granted to the player upon completion.

2. If the player kills enemies associated with said quest along the way, you get full combat XP, and the same amount is subtracted from the XP pot.

3. Upon quest completion all remaining enemies' XP is reduced to 0.

 

This is essentially what has been proposed by the devs, with the only difference being combat XP rewarded on the spot. Players can mix and match when to sneak/fight and gain the same amount of XP when all is said and done.

It doesn't really solve the issue of avoiding combat becoming the best solution though.

 

If the XP system was the only thing considered, yes you have a point.

I assume you're implying things like damage to health and expended resources associated with the combat path, opposed to the sneak path which doesn't suffer either of those? Perhaps this could be balanced by the fact that enemies will drop gold and stamina recovery items? The other way would be to make the sneaky characters use expensive consumables such as invisibility potions, or bribe some guards etc.. My point is there are ways to balance it out, not necessarily a irrevocable flaw in the XP reward design.

[PrimeJunta]

I find it rather Ironic that you claim to be so perceptive about noticing things in games and fail to see that the quest/objective xp only system handing out equal rewards would not be rewarding the avoidance of combat/conflict.

 

True, it does, but in a way that is relatively easy to address. E.g. low-level loot drops from kills which more or less match your expected expenditure of resources for the battle. As an added perk, skillful players will be able to win battles with less resource use, meaning they'll end up ahead. This is a much easier problem to address than the imbalances introduced by kill XP.

[UpgrayeDD]

This could be a way to support alternative styles of questing while retaining combat XP.

 

1. A quest is allotted a pot of XP which is granted to the player upon completion.

2. If the player kills enemies associated with said quest along the way, you get full combat XP, and the same amount is subtracted from the XP pot.

3. Upon quest completion all remaining enemies' XP is reduced to 0.

 

This is essentially what has been proposed by the devs, with the only difference being combat XP rewarded on the spot. Players can mix and match when to sneak/fight and gain the same amount of XP when all is said and done.

It doesn't really solve the issue of avoiding combat becoming the best solution though.

 

Wouldn't - in a well designed system - the best solution be based on the party build?

 

ie, if you have a group of fighters and battle mages then surely the outlay of resources is going to be minimal compared to having the same group try a diplomatic or sneaky solution?

From what the Dev's have said they are trying to separate combat prowess and skill prowess as ways of progression. so I can't see any reason why one of my mages couldn't be good at negotiation or my fighter couldn't be good at intimidation. I have no clue how then plan to handle sneaking but a little spell like invisibility is a rather common thing in rpgs. Also the dev state that they don't like having just one way of acomplishing something. Seems logical to think that other classes besides rogues can sneak past enemies.

[UpgrayeDD]

: Hence people who like their jobs refuse to get paid for it and instead get moneyz by doing side quests.

Ehm, no... they just get paid A LOAN (goal completion, or usually, a month work), instead of PER HOUR (per kill).

 

Do you have a great post on how loans are bad and everyone should be paid by the hour or everyone stops working? I would love to read it...

I'm pretty sure you mean a pay check for a pay period. However how much you recieve is still determed by how much work you did. Worker A builds a wall and it takes him 32 hours of work to do. Worker B builds a wall thats bigger and it takes him 40 hours to do so. Guess who got paid more?

I think my example flew over most people... so let's say it clearly...

 

You aren't paid PER HOUR. You don't get each hour amount of money donated at your account (per kill).

At the end of month your effort is set into money. Once. That's your loan. Or in this case, that would be "quest-XP".

 

If you spend 32 hours you get less quest XP than 40 hours, indeed. That's why bigger missions give bigger rewards. Or more difficult ones give bigger rewards.

But there's no need to instead of pay once at the end of that 32 hour pay the employee 32 seperate times. Because otherwise he stops working. Since that gives "no reward"...

maybe you don't seem to get it. Both in pay for work in quests(xp) and in work in real life(most of the time) You get paid after you've already done the work. That is not a loan. A loan would imply that they give you Exp and Items before you slay the dragon... And maybe that bigger wall means slaying some extra orcs or solving some ancient riddle in the same quest.

[Hassat Hunter]

From what the Dev's have said they are trying to separate combat prowess and skill prowess as ways of progression. so I can't see any reason why one of my mages couldn't be good at negotiation or my fighter couldn't be good at intimidation. I have no clue how then plan to handle sneaking but a little spell like invisibility is a rather common thing in rpgs. Also the dev state that they don't like having just one way of acomplishing something. Seems logical to think that other classes besides rogues can sneak past enemies.

I think you're looking a bit too much at "balance" or "the exact same results"...

 

While, yes, that was stated, it wasn't stated in a way that every single quest, encounter etc. would balance out.

In the end one path looses some in a, gains some in b, and eventually it all balances out.

 

When you start grasping the devs mean that with balance than what you currently read it into it I hope you see the geniality in it, and the gameplay possibilities and expandatures compared to old IE games...

[Somna]

: Hence people who like their jobs refuse to get paid for it and instead get moneyz by doing side quests.

Ehm, no... they just get paid A LOAN (goal completion, or usually, a month work), instead of PER HOUR (per kill).

 

Do you have a great post on how loans are bad and everyone should be paid by the hour or everyone stops working? I would love to read it...

I'm pretty sure you mean a pay check for a pay period. However how much you recieve is still determed by how much work you did. Worker A builds a wall and it takes him 32 hours of work to do. Worker B builds a wall thats bigger and it takes him 40 hours to do so. Guess who got paid more?

I think my example flew over most people... so let's say it clearly...

 

You aren't paid PER HOUR. You don't get each hour amount of money donated at your account (per kill).

At the end of month your effort is set into money. Once. That's your loan. Or in this case, that would be "quest-XP".

 

If you spend 32 hours you get less quest XP than 40 hours, indeed. That's why bigger missions give bigger rewards. Or more difficult ones give bigger rewards.

But there's no need to instead of pay once at the end of that 32 hour pay the employee 32 seperate times. Because otherwise he stops working. Since that gives "no reward"...

 

Just nitpicking, but loan for most people means a debt. It sounds like you're thinking of salary, but then that makes your comparison not make much sense either...

[Sacred_Path]

Yeah, you could divide players into two camps -- those who respond strongly to systemic incentives, and those who don't. Those who don't usually have some reason they don't; for example, they role-play some particular kind of character even if it goes against the grain of the incentives. LARPing in other words. Or maybe they're in it for the story, just not interested in figuring out the game system, or just casually play through once. Which is all cool IMO. I've played a few games like that myself -- ones I didn't really care about enough to get deeply into. Mass Effect to name one relatively modern one. Played through it once, didn't bother returning to it for any reason.

 

That's one possibility, though doesn't align exactly to what I said. I think I react to rewarding strategies as much as the next guy; however, if one "strategy" has me killing respawning boars for two days on end and the other has me playing through the game in a way that was probably intended more, creating a challenging and fun experience, I think I'll have no problem going for the latter.

 

I may be a bit more of a game design geek than most people, since I am a software designer myself. As such, I am irritated no end by design flaws, and perhaps for that very reason I tend to notice them... and then get caught in the ensuing degenerate strategies. More casual players probably won't care; they'll never get deep enough into the system to catch any but the most glaringly obvious misalignments, like that rest-spamming you mentioned for example. And some of the truly hardcore consciously eschew the degenerate strategies they know about, and are strong-willed enough to stick to their decision. Perhaps some aren't even bothered by the availability of such strategies. For me, just knowing that they're there, within arms reach, greatly reduces my enjoyment of a game.

 

Point being: I see no reason whatsoever not to attempt to create the most elegant, least exploitable game system as well aligned with the in-game objectives your game as you're able. I mean sure, nothing's perfect and eventually you're going to have to stop faffing about with it and let it go, and there will probably still be the odd exploit left in, but leaving in misaligned incentives that you know to be misaligned is just pointless and stupid IMO.

 

This is in keeping with what I wrote above: I think the major concern should be to create a game that is eminently playable in at least one way. Take another degenerate strategy, endless save-reloading; it was easy enough to avoid. Simply don't reload. IMO enabling this option is all the devs are obliged to do, well maybe also balancing the game in such a way that this is not only theoretically possible. As long as it's a viable alternative for an experienced player, this eliminates the entire problem of possible save-scumming.

Rest spamming was worse because, like I said, there was just no intuitive way to avoid it. Even on an Ironman run, the pros were so massive and the cons so minor that I ended up doing it, as there was just no alternative that jumped out at you. What I'd want to see (if devs are aware that there are such loopholes in the game) is that they put up signs, in the manual or ingame, that say (-not literally-) "see, we know you'll want to spam that rest button and it sort of sucks and takes the challenge out of the game, but here we've given you this other way to play the game, if you want to avoid degeneracy this is what we intended you to do". Not bloody likely to happen of course.

[JFSOCC]

We've got a good discussion going on here. clearly this is something important.

 

I find the problem of much of the conflict resolution and encounter solving is that it's clear that you're dealing with an obstacle. When that's the case you're searching for a solution, rather than playing and acting like you would. (If you get what I mean)

not delivering xp for specific solutions goes a long way to making it much more like playing an ongoing game and less like solving independent problems.

[Hassat Hunter]

Just nitpicking, but loan for most people means a debt. It sounds like you're thinking of salary, but then that makes your comparison not make much sense either...

Yes, that kind of loan... salary.

You aren't paid PER HOUR. You don't get each hour amount of money donated at your account (per kill).

At the end of month your effort is set into money. Once. That's your loan. Or in this case, that would be "quest-XP".

 

If you spend 32 hours you get less quest XP than 40 hours, indeed. That's why bigger missions give bigger rewards. Or more difficult ones give bigger rewards.

But there's no need to instead of pay once at the end of that 32 hour pay the employee 32 seperate times. Because otherwise he stops working. Since that gives "no reward"...

maybe you don't seem to get it. Both in pay for work in quests(xp) and in work in real life(most of the time) You get paid after you've already done the work. That is not a loan. A loan would imply that they give you Exp and Items before you slay the dragon... And maybe that bigger wall means slaying some extra orcs or solving some ancient riddle in the same quest.

Nope, that's exactly my point infact.

You get paid AFTER the work is done (quest/objective completion). Not while it's still in progress and you're working on it (ie. kill XP or being 20 hours in your 32 hours week).

 

You don't see people stop working since they don't get paid per hour their salary. They're perfectly fine waiting for it at the end of the month. Why aren't all of you?

Why do you need to see an increase every hour of your account, rather than wait for the big payoff? Are you really doing that at work too. Just not working since the rewards only at the end?

Edited January 15, 2013 by Hassat Hunter

[UpgrayeDD]

I find it rather Ironic that you claim to be so perceptive about noticing things in games and fail to see that the quest/objective xp only system handing out equal rewards would not be rewarding the avoidance of combat/conflict.

 

True, it does, but in a way that is relatively easy to address. E.g. low-level loot drops from kills which more or less match your expected expenditure of resources for the battle. As an added perk, skillful players will be able to win battles with less resource use, meaning they'll end up ahead. This is a much easier problem to address than the imbalances introduced by kill XP.

Could you please elaborate on how it would be so terrible if the majority of Exp was quest based and some exp was rewarded for combat ahead of avoidance options?

[Amentep]

From what the Dev's have said they are trying to separate combat prowess and skill prowess as ways of progression. so I can't see any reason why one of my mages couldn't be good at negotiation or my fighter couldn't be good at intimidation. I have no clue how then plan to handle sneaking but a little spell like invisibility is a rather common thing in rpgs. Also the dev state that they don't like having just one way of acomplishing something. Seems logical to think that other classes besides rogues can sneak past enemies.

 

Right, but I'd think that a fighter who specializes in sneaking would have to be paying a penalty to some other skill that would diminish their effectiveness in combat or other aspect of gameplay. Hence why I also suggested a "battle mage" build as opposed to a support one who might have an invisibility spell and a sound damping spell at the cost of not having as many combat spells to choose from.

[PrimeJunta]

That's one possibility, though doesn't align exactly to what I said. I think I react to rewarding strategies as much as the next guy; however, if one "strategy" has me killing respawning boars for two days on end and the other has me playing through the game in a way that was probably intended more, creating a challenging and fun experience, I think I'll have no problem going for the latter.

 

So, for how long would you be willing to mindlessly grind boars? Two days is a bit much, for sure. How about one day? Four hours? Two hours? One hour? A half an hour? Different people have different thresholds for it. With NetHack, I find pudding farming too tedious to bother with, but I do polypile (unless I'm going for a polyless conduct).

 

And if you as a designer could align the incentives in such a way that there was no benefit to grinding boars for even fifteen minutes, why wouldn't you?

 

 

This is in keeping with what I wrote above: I think the major concern should be to create a game that is eminently playable in at least one way. Take another degenerate strategy, endless save-reloading; it was easy enough to avoid. Simply don't reload. IMO enabling this option is all the devs are obliged to do, well maybe also balancing the game in such a way that this is not only theoretically possible. As long as it's a viable alternative for an experienced player, this eliminates the entire problem of possible save-scumming.

Rest spamming was worse because, like I said, there was just no intuitive way to avoid it. Even on an Ironman run, the pros were so massive and the cons so minor that I ended up doing it, as there was just no alternative that jumped out at you. What I'd want to see (if devs are aware that there are such loopholes in the game) is that they put up signs, in the manual or ingame, that say (-not literally-) "see, we know you'll want to spam that rest button and it sort of sucks and takes the challenge out of the game, but here we've given you this other way to play the game, if you want to avoid degeneracy this is what we intended you to do". Not bloody likely to happen of course.

 

You know, it doesn't sound like we disagree in principle. We just have slightly different priorities. I value balance between different approaches more than you do. I certainly agree that there should be at least one fun way to play the game. Moreover, if there is only one, the game should somehow communicate to the player, through its incentives, what the fun way is so the player doesn't accidentally attempt to play it in an un-fun way. But I do think it's a worthy goal to try to give the player as many different fun ways of playing the game as you can. In fact, I believe that just the availability of those alternative approaches adds depth and interest to any of them. That's why I'm such a big fan of branching storylines, unexpected consequences, and delayed effects.

[UpgrayeDD]

Just nitpicking, but loan for most people means a debt. It sounds like you're thinking of salary, but then that makes your comparison not make much sense either...

Yes, that kind of loan... salary.

You aren't paid PER HOUR. You don't get each hour amount of money donated at your account (per kill).

At the end of month your effort is set into money. Once. That's your loan. Or in this case, that would be "quest-XP".

 

If you spend 32 hours you get less quest XP than 40 hours, indeed. That's why bigger missions give bigger rewards. Or more difficult ones give bigger rewards.

But there's no need to instead of pay once at the end of that 32 hour pay the employee 32 seperate times. Because otherwise he stops working. Since that gives "no reward"...

maybe you don't seem to get it. Both in pay for work in quests(xp) and in work in real life(most of the time) You get paid after you've already done the work. That is not a loan. A loan would imply that they give you Exp and Items before you slay the dragon... And maybe that bigger wall means slaying some extra orcs or solving some ancient riddle in the same quest.

Nope, that's exactly my point infact.

You get paid AFTER the work is done (quest/objective completion). Not while it's still in progress and you're working on it (ie. kill XP or being 20 hours in your 32 hours week).

 

You don't see people stop working since they don't get paid per hour their salary. They're perfectly fine waiting for it at the end of the month. Why aren't all of you?

Why do you need to see an increase every hour of your account, rather than wait for the big payoff? Are you really doing that at work too. Just not working since the rewards only at the end?

regardless of when you get paid the person who does the most work should get the most reward. And while I agree completely that monetary rewards (Like paying you 1000 gold to slay the dragon. When Exp makes a whole lot less sense to be divvy out in such away. When I workout I don't suddenly grow muscles a week later. but thats besides the point. The more I work out during the month the better the results whether I see them gradually or all at once after a month.

[PrimeJunta]

Could you please elaborate on how it would be so terrible if the majority of Exp was quest based and some exp was rewarded for combat ahead of avoidance options?

 

I'm not saying it'd be terrible, I'm saying quest XP only is better. Combat XP -- even if there's only relatively little of it -- will create perverse incentives, which result in degenerate strategies. You won't be able to have any persistent respawns (e.g. the "close the portal wherefrom the demons spring" quest), you'll reward players who chase monsters for no other reason than XP and so on.

 

Once again: if there is an easy way to align the systemic incentives with the in-game objectives, why would you not want to do that? If you were a designer, why would you knowingly leave in perverse incentives?

[UpgrayeDD]

From what the Dev's have said they are trying to separate combat prowess and skill prowess as ways of progression. so I can't see any reason why one of my mages couldn't be good at negotiation or my fighter couldn't be good at intimidation. I have no clue how then plan to handle sneaking but a little spell like invisibility is a rather common thing in rpgs. Also the dev state that they don't like having just one way of acomplishing something. Seems logical to think that other classes besides rogues can sneak past enemies.

 

Right, but I'd think that a fighter who specializes in sneaking would have to be paying a penalty to some other skill that would diminish their effectiveness in combat or other aspect of gameplay. Hence why I also suggested a "battle mage" build as opposed to a support one who might have an invisibility spell and a sound damping spell at the cost of not having as many combat spells to choose from.

Well should that be the case that non-combat skills and combat skills are things you have to choose between(which again is not what the dev's have said) then that would change a lot of things.

[UpgrayeDD]

Could you please elaborate on how it would be so terrible if the majority of Exp was quest based and some exp was rewarded for combat ahead of avoidance options?

 

I'm not saying it'd be terrible, I'm saying quest XP only is better. Combat XP -- even if there's only relatively little of it -- will create perverse incentives, which result in degenerate strategies. You won't be able to have any persistent respawns (e.g. the "close the portal wherefrom the demons spring" quest), you'll reward players who chase monsters for no other reason than XP and so on.

 

Once again: if there is an easy way to align the systemic incentives with the in-game objectives, why would you not want to do that? If you were a designer, why would you knowingly leave in perverse incentives?

but wouldn't you agree that which ever the harder path is(whether avoidance or combat) that it should be rewarded accordingly? Otherwise you are encouraging the easiest path(again the reason the want quest/objective only is to avoid encouraging one over the other) Edited January 15, 2013 by UpgrayeDD

[Amentep]

I find it rather Ironic that you claim to be so perceptive about noticing things in games and fail to see that the quest/objective xp only system handing out equal rewards would not be rewarding the avoidance of combat/conflict.

 

True, it does, but in a way that is relatively easy to address. E.g. low-level loot drops from kills which more or less match your expected expenditure of resources for the battle. As an added perk, skillful players will be able to win battles with less resource use, meaning they'll end up ahead. This is a much easier problem to address than the imbalances introduced by kill XP.

Could you please elaborate on how it would be so terrible if the majority of Exp was quest based and some exp was rewarded for combat ahead of avoidance options?

 

I believe the inherent issue is the ability to double-dip into the XP.

 

Lets say you have 10 orcs guarding a chest that contains an object you've been hired to get (the quest).

 

If the 10 orcs have a 10xp for being killed value and the quest itself gives 500xp then

if you fight the ten orcs (100xp) and complete the quest (500xp) you get 600xp else

if you sneak past the orcs (no xp) and complete the quest (500xp) you get 500 xp

so the scenario encourages combat.

 

Same scenario but you add 100 xp for sneaking past the orcs to not encourage combat as a resolution

now if you sneak past the orcs (100xp) and complete the quest (500xp) and then double back and kill the orcs (100xp) you now encourage stealth complete quests and clean up for xp.

 

So now you have to deal with, how do you make sneak a viable option without adding an additional incentive to go back and kill the orcs upon completion of the ques. You could remove the orcs (but why do they leave when they don't know what they're guarding is gone?) so they can't be killed. You could make them unkillable (that sort of thing annoys players). Or you could script it so that if the quest is completed by stealth the orcs no longer give XP. But I think what the developers are saying, rather than looking at a low level (script something that changes the quest xp for each scenario) that they'd like a high level solution that works for all scenarios.

[Valorian]

You don't see people stop working since they don't get paid per hour their salary. They're perfectly fine waiting for it at the end of the month. Why aren't all of you?

 

RL economy works quite differently than handing out XP in games. Most people would, I think, prefer to get paid more often (so that they don't have to wait until the end of the month), but in a game there's no reason to not reward the player immediately after completing a job, like killing an orc.

[JFSOCC]

UpgrayeDD have you considered that incentives might work differently?

[PrimeJunta]

but wouldn't you agree that which ever the harder path is(whether avoidance or combat) that it should be rewarded accordingly? Otherwise you are encouraging the easiest path(again the reason the want quest/objective only is to avoid encouraging one over the other)

 

On average... yes. But in every particular instance... absolutely not. It would be boring if I knew of every problem I encountered that I could choose stealth, diplomacy, or combat and the end result would be the same. The game would be much more interesting if it had you wondering whether you did right to fight, or not fight, this time. Variety is the key.

 

And once more, the obligatory caveat -- perfect balance is a mirage. Won't happen. But there is such a thing as sufficient balance: making the overall system roughly neutral re the various subsystems (combat, stealth, diplomacy, etc.), and then creating a variety of problems which feature a mix of different favored approaches.

[Helm]

Could you please elaborate on how it would be so terrible if the majority of Exp was quest based and some exp was rewarded for combat ahead of avoidance options?

 

I'm not saying it'd be terrible, I'm saying quest XP only is better. Combat XP -- even if there's only relatively little of it -- will create perverse incentives, which result in degenerate strategies. You won't be able to have any persistent respawns (e.g. the "close the portal wherefrom the demons spring" quest), you'll reward players who chase monsters for no other reason than XP and so on.

 

Once again: if there is an easy way to align the systemic incentives with the in-game objectives, why would you not want to do that? If you were a designer, why would you knowingly leave in perverse incentives?

Why do you keep saying the system in the IE games sucked, but that they were great games? It does not make any sense and is a major contradiction. You should love the system, because the games were great (that is why you are here too)

 

Combat + quest xp is the only way to go, just like in the spiritual predecessors. Quest only xp will only cause "degenerative" gameplay in a game that is based on strategical and tactical combat.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Helm

[rjshae]

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." -- Albert Einstein.

 

Otherwise known as degenerate gameplay.