Jeff's blog -- bushwhacking players

[jlsgaladriel]

I was just reading Jeff's most recent blog post in my rss feed, and was thinking about how much gaming has changed in the last few decades.

 

This dovetails with a SlideToPlay podcast -- #30 -- in which defenders of an old-style roguelike were in discussion with the kid who had given it a bad review, because, well, the character *died* in the game, just *died*, and that was frustrating!

 

(I've played Moria (now Angband) in its multiple iterations on and off for decades, and I've never once won. Somewhere around level 35 or 40, my character dies, and she's just dead. And I think, "heck. Well, okay, maybe my next character will be a ranger," and I'm not put off the game.)

 

I think there's been a paradigm shift in gaming, in which expectations have undergone a sea change. Folks like many of us here have a stake in wanting Jeff to challenge us: we're part of the old gaming world, in which failing and then getting better and then figuring out how to beat a challenge is the best part. Jeff has an even bigger stake in understanding the new paradigm, in which the next generation gets to enjoy their "Adolescent Power Fantasy." In an ideal world, everyone's needs get met: we still get our challenge, and Jeff's kids still get heat and shelter and cool toys.

 

I think maybe the Geneforge series did this well, with its clearly optional separate challenge dungeons. One could ignore them completely and still "win." One actually had to work pretty hard just to open them up for playing.

 

I guess I'm looking to encourage Jeff not to abandon us challenge-seeking folks completely, but rather to consider a geneforge-style geographical system to feed our need for fun.

[Alorael at Large]

I agree with Jeff. There are good challenges and bad challenges. The good kind are very clearly areas in which you don't belong, even if they're near lower level areas. The A5 Drake Pillars do that well: spies and Lysstak for you to deal with now, and a small army of powerful sliths for you to either demonstrate your amazing talents against or come back to fight later. The single encounter that's out of your league is just annoying.

 

Oh, and for the record I'm all for not having to remember to go back for things, because I'm bad at it. But having a way to simply record in your save file the places you need to go back to and, ideally, where they are would be nice.

 

—Alorael, who has also now gone back and read Jeff's Dragon Age review. He was wondering if the game would get added to Jeff's list of games that he recommends even though they're technically competition. From Jeff's mini-review, the answer looks like it's a definite yes.

[jlsgaladriel]

Quote:

Oh, and for the record I'm all for not having to remember to go back for things, because I'm bad at it. But having a way to simply record in your save file the places you need to go back to and, ideally, where they are would be nice.

Oh, I totally agree with this: that's why I'm arguing for a "separate challenge dungeons" approach, rather than what I'll call the ohmygoshwhattheheckbarbeque (omgwt*bbq) approach.

I also want map flags encoded in each savefile. Heck, they don't even have to have a text option, although labeling would be nice. Even the ability to place a dozen pushpin-like map flags would be great.

[Mea Tulpa]

Angband FTW

[Randomizer]

Geneforge 4 had the expert challenge dungeon that you couldn't enter until the very end. Geneforge 5 also was near the end. However Avernum games usually had the areas much earlier in the games so you could wander into these death traps at a much lower level than you should be.

 

However I always like the open endedness of Exile games where you could wander around exploring until you ran into a challenge that killed you. If you came up with a clever exploit than you could leap ahead otherwise death and reload.

[Swimmin' Salmon]

http://www.pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/awesome-by-proxy-addicted-to-fake.html

 

I think most folks here are into mastery, rather than just performing. Isn't that what Jeff's games encourage, as far as audience?

[Enraged Slith]

I prefer games that focus on their intent. One of my favorites, Okami, would have been no better if they decided to make the combat and puzzles more difficult. Developers need to focus on why people will want to play their game. Know your audience (stupid LucasArts).

 

In my opinion, Jeff's games have always been about portraying a world and the consequences your actions have on creatures that live there. I'm glad he's realizing that mini-encounters are only an accent to that endeavour.

[Sudanna]

Nalyd doesn't play games for a challenge. He plays games to enjoy himself. Arbitrary loss of progress is not fun. He plays roguelikes, but always scurries around to find where they keep the save files first. Cheating? Nalyd considers it to be fixing a fatal flaw in the game.

[Ephesos]

Originally Posted By: Rex Romanum Cryptogrammaticon

Nethack FTW

FYT.

I don't mind dying in games... I've come to accept that it's a natural part of the process.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Ephesos

I don't mind dying in games... I've come to accept that it's a natural part of the process.

I've long since lost track of the number of times I've died in an RPG. I almost expect it as part of the learning curve.

[Sudanna]

I doubt that's the problem. The problem is having to start over completely when you die.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Phanes

I doubt that's the problem. The problem is having to start over completely when you die.

Not unless you can save beforehand. I've learned this the hard way, and even then I don't think I really learned the lesson all that well.

[Dintiradan]

Salmon's link is very insightful, as are a number of other articles written by the author.

 

RE: Jeff's article: I think varying difficulties in encounters add to the realism in games, and beating them in early levels gives you a lot of satisfaction (you know you won because of your skill, not because your characters were at a high level). But I do get what he's saying. There's no way to warn players about the optional encounter without breaking the fourth wall (after all, most RPGs are about unexpected heroes taking on 'insurmountable' odds). And to be honest, if I got a note in game saying "Jeff Vogel thinks you can't win this", that would be more incentive to run in guns ablazing.

 

RE: Rogue-likes: I never understood why these games don't have a save option. Think Escape Velocity: Nova; when you start a new game, you can choose between permadeath and reloading on your last planet when you die. Or why not give the option of rezzing after death, but with level loss; what a lot of tabletop RPGs do? I can't see why giving the players more options is a bad thing: after all, that's what you do with a difficulty setting.

 

(Takes off gamer hat, puts on programmer hat.) On the other hand, flexibility is hard...

 

But not that hard in this case.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

RE: Rogue-likes: I never understood why these games don't have a save option.

They do. It's called backing up your save file. It's also cheating and not how the game is meant to be played; roguelikes are largely about risk management, and that aspect of the game is trivialised if you can reload whenever a risk doesn't pay off.

[Student of Trinity]

I think there can be lots of difficulty bumps; just not difficulty cliffs, where the level shoots straight up without warning. It's nice to have some things you can fight easily, and some others that need a lot of buffing and potions and such, but are well within your grasp when you expend some of the resources you've been saving for just such occasions. Totally homogeneous challenge level is boring.

 

There can even be a few very steep difficulty hills, if they're somehow clearly marked as Places You Should Not Be Right Now, and if this makes sense within the game somehow. Godzilla should not be just hanging around in the open near the Baby Goblin Dungeon, even if there's a sign saying 'Beware of Godzilla' and 'You must be THIS HIGH LEVEL to enter this ride.'

 

I think Jeff's problem with A6 is that he set out to have the player do cool things from the very beginning, instead of having to grind through baby goblins first. And he did this very well by making even the very first main plot quests interesting adventures. But with his side quests and monsters outside the plot, he seems to have tried to make several of them cool just by making them difficult. What he should have done was leave the difficulty much closer to the local norm, but written in more story and background to the side quests, as he did with the main quests.

 

I'm not sure this would even have been more work, since balancing hard fights can take quite a while. But it does require having a lot of little story ideas instead of tough fight ideas. That is probably harder.

[Mea Tulpa]

The lack of saving / permadeath of roguelikes is a critical element to those games. It is definitely contradictory to what we would typically consider pleasant in gaming, but you have to embrace it to really understand why people enjoy roguelikes. I would compare it to music, where we usually expect to hear organized, pleasant, concordant music. If you listen to

full of discordance, or say to Aphex Twin's "Ventolin" with its deliberately ear-piercing tones, you have to throw that expectation out the window in order to appreciate the music. But both pieces of music are deeply appreciated and even revered by musicians and listeners within their genres.

 

[Let's not forget that Bartok seems to have provided the central inspiration behind Jeff's upcoming new series!]

 

Permadeath, when taken seriously, completely changes how you play the game. After your first few deaths, you learn to be more cautious than you think is necessary. Consumable items, which compulsive optimizers go through Spiderweb games without ever using, become essential to carry AND use from the start of the game. Skills and tactics that don't seem important in save-and-reload games become a matter of life and death.

[jlsgaladriel]

Quote:

FYT

Okay, the urban dictionary isn't helping with this one, especially since I'm pretty sure a mod wouldn't use "F" to stand for a nasty word.

So, FYT??

[Ephesos]

FYT = Fixed Your Typo

 

Frequently used as a sarcastic way of saying "This is what you really meant, right?"

[Unplayable Playable Character]

Huh, I though it meant "For Your Thoughts", with could be used as a non-sarcastic way to say "This is what you really meant, right?"

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

I've said "FYT" on other forums before, and everyone thought I was saying "**** You Too". I had to explain the concept to them, and eventually they got it, but they spell it out instead of abbreviating it. I'd figure that that phrase would be represented by FU2 and not FYT, but apparently not everyone sees it that way.

[Alorael at Large]

You don't need to back up Rogue-like save files. You can always just force quit or end task when about to die. And it reveals fascinating things about the Random Number Gods. They're very pseudorandom.

 

—Alorael, who finds the thoughts on performance versus mastery interesting. He's seen the argument before, though, and he's fairly sure it doesn't hold water. Performance-oriented players may gravitate towards RPGs because you can advance through the game without improving your playing, but you also get min-maxers who want to master the game (and min-maxers who want to trick out their performance), people who play on torment, and people who play games for the story, not really for the challenge at all. RPGs don't instill bad habits. Bad habits sometimes match well with RPGs.

[Khoth]

Originally Posted By: Do not spindle

You don't need to back up Rogue-like save files. You can always just force quit or end task when about to die.

Nethack and ADOM are both wise to your tricksy plans. They delete the savefile while you're playing.

[VCH]

Originally Posted By: The Almighty Doer of Stuff

I've said "FYT" on other forums before, and everyone thought I was saying "**** You Too". I had to explain the concept to them, and eventually they got it, but they spell it out instead of abbreviating it. I'd figure that that phrase would be represented by FU2 and not FYT, but apparently not everyone sees it that way.

That's what I read any time I see it here.

[Dintiradan]

Why not the more usual TFTFY (There, Fixed That For You)?

[The Mystic]

Never heard of that one. Then again, I'm way behind on learning all the abbreviations out there.

[Marlenny]

Err... I seriously doubt that is the more usual.

[Dikiyoba]

More importantly, it's a whole two letters longer and therefore less efficient.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Swimmin' Salmon]

Yeah.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Poached Salmon

Yeah.

tl;dr

[jlsgaladriel]

Marlenny, there's a bug on my screen, ack!

 

You totally got me there.

[Dantius]

Back on topic, the whole point of a Roguelike game is that you play it in a much different manner. Really, the purpose of the game is to force you to abandon the mentality that "I MUST KILL ANYTHING WITH HP" and instead actually run from fights and use tactics. It reaches the point on levels 20+ in Rogue where I will stare at the screen for minutes on end, before I finally attempt to make a single move, then repeat the process. It is literally the single most cerebral computer game I've played. THe poit is not to win by force, but to win by tactics- somethng that most games after it forgot to include, making the aforementioned mentality the chief worldview amongst gamers. It's a real shame, because the Rogue-ness of Rogue is, IMO, what make it the greatest game ever- nothing else can imitate it. NetHack tries to, but ultimately fails due to its lack of Rogue's simplicity. It really is a pity that we will never see its like again.

[Dintiradan]

Maybe it's just the usual for the Slashdot crowd, but a quick check for the acronym and its variants on Google and Urban Dictionary tells all:

 

FIFY (Fixed It For You):

- Google: 640,000 results

- Urban Dictionary: +127, -14

 

FTFY (Fixed That For You):

- Google: 96,200 results

- Urban Dictionary: +444, -19

 

TFTFY (There, Fixed That For You):

- Google: 5,390 results

- Urban Dictionary: +4, -2

(Okay, so this variant isn't that well used after all.)

 

<drum-roll />

 

FYT has 821,000 results, but nothing on the first page has to do with typos. Urban Dictionary has the most voted definition as "F--k You Tom" (?); "Fixed Your Typo" is at +12, -14.

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, back to work.

 

EDIT: Okay, this is ridiculous: writing out f--k in my post won't just censor the word -- it will censor everything that came before it too.

[Lilith]

oh no an acronym invented on the sw forums is unknown outside the sw forums let's import an acronym from outside so we can be like everyone else, maybe then slashdot will love us again

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Back on topic, the whole point of a Roguelike game is that you play it in a much different manner. Really, the purpose of the game is to force you to abandon the mentality that "I MUST KILL ANYTHING WITH HP" and instead actually run from fights and use tactics. It reaches the point on levels 20+ in Rogue where I will stare at the screen for minutes on end, before I finally attempt to make a single move, then repeat the process. It is literally the single most cerebral computer game I've played. THe poit is not to win by force, but to win by tactics- somethng that most games after it forgot to include, making the aforementioned mentality the chief worldview amongst gamers. It's a real shame, because the Rogue-ness of Rogue is, IMO, what make it the greatest game ever- nothing else can imitate it. NetHack tries to, but ultimately fails due to its lack of Rogue's simplicity. It really is a pity that we will never see its like again.

I understand the point behind roguelikes, I really do. I just don't understand why adding a save option 'destroys' the game. You can even hide the option by default -- save functionality is only added if asked for during installation, or whatever.

To illustrate my point, just look at conducts in NetHack. Nothing (as I recall) is forcing you to stick to a certain path, yet people do it all the time. You can voluntarily do ironman with first person shooters or 4X games, why not with roguelikes?

(To pick another analogy, I should still be able to play Magic, even though I don't stay in Type 2. When I save games, I may not be having fun the 'right' way, but I'm still having fun.)

Originally Posted By: Thuryl

oh no an acronym invented on the sw forums is unknown outside the sw forums let's import an acronym from outside so we can be like everyone else, maybe then slashdot will love us again

Speaking of which, JV hasn't trolled on his blog for quite a while now. Losing his touch?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

I understand the point behind roguelikes, I really do. I just don't understand why adding a save option 'destroys' the game. You can even hide the option by default -- save functionality is only added if asked for during installation, or whatever.

it's not that hard to copy a file yourself if that's what you really want to do, stop crying about it already

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

I just don't understand why adding a save option 'destroys' the game.

Come now, let's play a game of chess. Except now, you can, at any point in the game, go back as many moves as you like and resume the game, able to make different moves based on your advanced knowledge of my strategy and tactics. You can now examine every single move at your leisure, enabling you to have infinite computational depth. Oh, and did I mention that, as your opponent, I have to make the exact same moves every time once I have made them, leaving you free to vary your tactics to suit every situation, and leaving you the complete freedom to retry an sequence of moves for as long as necessary, until you get the perfect combination. Sounds like a blast, right?


No. It sounds boring. The ability to replay detracts from the emphasis on the originality of thinking, making the game trite and uninteresting with the ability to replay over and over and over. The entire charm is that you have only one shot, and that you better use it wisely. If you don't like that, fine, go play something else. But, quite frankly, removing the single most important concept of the Roguelike just because you fell like it is probably a bad idea.

[VCH]

FYT

[ThirdParty]

Hmm. I agree that it's bad to unexpectedly burden the player's memory or unexpectedly kill the party, but I'm not sure that linearity is the right solution.

Originally Posted By: Jeff's blog

People have enough to worry about in their lives as it is without remembering where they left behind some giant they need to go back and kill.

The "Current Quests" list has largely eliminated this problem. All that's necessary is to make it a little bit more complete. Maybe have some quests auto-generate without being offered by NPCs: e.g. "You discovered a demon trapped under Patrick's Tower. Nobody's offered you anything for killing it, but you doubt that anyone would complain if you did."

Originally Posted By: Jeff's blog

I swear, I put in "OMG this room ahead is megahard guys srsly!!!" warnings all the time, and nobody ever listens to them. Nor should they. Characters in games tell them how lethal the territory ahead is all the time, and then they enter it and prevail. No reason to think things should be different here.

One possible solution to this is to go ahead and offer explicit recommended levels: e.g. instead of "A reward has been offered for killing the Crypt Wight in the Memorial Grounds; caution, Crypt Wights are extremely dangerous." go ahead and say "A reward has been offered for killing the Crypt Wight in the Memorial Grounds; caution, Crypt Wights are extremely dangerous (recommended level: 20)."

[Alorael at Large]

I enjoy Angband thoroughly, but I agree with Dinti. The enforced lack of saving is simply obnoxious, especially in these games that have built-in bragging rights modes. And, in Angband's case, a built-in cheat mode! What makes Angband even more bizarre is that there was, for a while, a quit without save option (control-E on Macs, if I remember it correctly).

 

No, that's not how the game should be played. Yes, if you step through the game with perfect information it becomes much easier. But what if someone wants to play it that way? Just as with cheating and editors in all single-player games, if you enjoy them, use them. The only point of games is to have fun. If you have fun bending the expectations of how the game should be played, fine, go for it! (Exception: If you're using your games to condition your way of thinking about the world, maybe you shouldn't cheat. That's definitely performance over mastery there.)

 

My first couple of Angband victories were "tainted," after all. I got sick of dying absurdly and I played with save-scumming and, the first time through, with a homebrew race and class designed to reduce—but not eliminate—the difficulty. I enjoyed the game more that way. I enjoyed it enough to play it in all its standard, masochistic glory now.

 

It's a game. Play it however you have fun playing it.

 

—Alorael, who just wants to be able to mark things on minimaps himself and have an index of his notes by area. There are a few games that let you add markers yourself, and that's nice, but keeping tabs on which areas have been marked up rather than just where in an area was marked is important.

[Student of Trinity]

Originally Posted By: VCH

TFTFY

FYT

[Swimmin' Salmon]

It's quite obvious that the problem is that people play Rogue at all. I mean, if you can't all agree that a game is good or bad, then no one should play it or enjoy it at all. Sheesh.

[Frozen Feet]

I, too, belong to the crowd of roguelike players. However, I love them because there *honest* about what they are. When I start a character in Incursion, I only expect a humiliating death. Anything else is a bonus. If you just want to see what the devs hid in the game, rejoice! Most roguelikes have a wizard or explore mode, letting you to play normally. It just tends to invalidate your score.

 

However, even with roguelikes there should be a sensible power curve. Sudden stupid deaths are acceptable at level one, because the ratio of learning and frustration favors the former - next time, you'll avoid the stupid death, and get further in the game. At level 50, when you've spend hours with a character, that arbitrariness *shouldn't* exist, because it forces the player to grind for a long while just to get at the same point. After a point, each situation should be manageable to a character of appropriate level.

 

This is why absolutely despise Zephyr hounds in Angband, especially those with irresistible breath attacks found in some variants. Your level 50 character enters the level and takes one step... and out of the blue, several dozen time hounds spit at you, pulverizing you before you can act. Whoever added them to the game should be hanged from the nuts.

[Swimmin' Salmon]

Sounds like those designers knew ahead of time that they wouldn't be in an interactive relationship with the players, and planned accordingly.

 

And, it sounds like you haven't yet achieved player-skill necessary to avoid that particular demise. Get back to work!

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Frozen Feet

This is why absolutely despise Zephyr hounds in Angband, especially those with irresistible breath attacks found in some variants. Your level 50 character enters the level and takes one step... and out of the blue, several dozen time hounds spit at you, pulverizing you before you can act. Whoever added them to the game should be hanged from the nuts.

By level 50 you really should have ESP.

[Student of Trinity]

Speaking of games where there is an interactive relationship between designers and players, my tabletop RPGs with children under 10 have continued fitfully, and recently led to a diceless version based on homemade cards something like Pokemon. This is the very opposite of the roguelike game: the game where death is impossible. The battles are all foregone conclusions, since the kids made up the basic rules, and their attention spans didn't stretch to giving themselves or the monsters too many tactical options, so it only requires adding a few numbers to see which side will survive. Since the kids don't want their characters to die, they are doomed to win. They seem able to work with that. In effect we are simply improvising a story together, starring them.

[Alorael at Large]

Zephyr Hounds are, generally speaking incredibly annoying. The lower-level ones have a tendency to wreck your equipment, the higher-level ones have a tendency to wreak havoc, you can't slip past them stealthily, they will come at you en masse, and even when they are minor threats they always come in excessive numbers.

 

In other words, they're really Roguelikes distilled down to their core.

 

—Alorael, who can think of several tabletop roleplaying games that all but prevent character death. If the story is about the characters and the players are invested in the story and the characters, ruining that is a bad idea. The difference might be failure. Your kids probably don't want to suffer grave consequences for things going wrong. There's actually probably a genre distinction in here too. There's a type of fantasy in which things generally go right for the heroes, who can do no wrong (perhaps exemplified by David Eddings), which is rather different from the grim, dark, gritty fantasy that is so beloved by others.

[Ephesos]

SoT, glad to hear those are going well. I had been meaning to ask if the experiments had continued or not.

 

Froze Feet, why aren't you playing AIMhack with us?

 

And about tabletop rpgs and character death... had to look for this. I don't like how suddenly D&D got death saving throws in 4th edition. It's kind of awkward, particularly because you can fail three times. I mean, the rules themselves aren't complicated and lend themselves to other interesting mechanical spin-offs, but the concept is strange to me. I tried to keep things simple for AIMhack, and what resulted is a system where it's pretty hard to die by sheer chance. However, if you're stupid or uncooperative with party members, it's pretty easy to die.

 

Now we've talked about when your character dies, but what about when other people's characters die? It doesn't pertain as much to the original topic, since it was single-player focused, but I'm still interested in people's thoughts. How much ability should one have to save other people from death?

[Mea Tulpa]

Even without ESP, Angband pretty much requires you to cast or zap multiple detecton spells every screen if you really want to ensure survival.

[Andraste]

While all of you are arguing about Rougelikes, Spore and I are doing research.

 

We each started a game of Nethack at 10:54 and both randomed characters. We both were assigned Orcish Female chaotic Barbarians, and had identical maps on the first floor, with identical loot, but different monsters. We also had identical starting inventories. Further studies will be conducted.

[jlsgaladriel]

Quote:

We each started a game of Nethack at 10:54 and both randomed characters. We both were assigned Orcish Female chaotic Barbarians, and had identical maps on the first floor, with identical loot...

Four is the standard IEEE-vetted random number.