20 Jul, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 161st comment:
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I disagree and agree. See, there are two different issues at play. First is the actual effectiveness of any choice on its own merits. If you have ability A and B, there should be no reason that A is better than B. If it is, just remove B. The same goes for complicated combinations of choices. If some combination is hands-down worse than another, don't allow that combination to happen. Make it so selecting one set of abilities blocks another, or go with a tree system, or anything. If you absolutely must allow players to select any combination, document the consequences and put big warnings right there in the game UI used to select new abilities. That basically eliminates (or strongly discourages) random selection of abilities, which solves your complaint. :)

That said, some players will find different sets of abilities more effective for specific uses or play styles, and that you can't work around. If I randomly select abilities I may end up with a character that has strong ranged power but I always try to melee everything and get my butt owned. Same in a "simple and balanced" game if I just select the wrong class. That is just poor strategy. It's at that point no different than me saying "I like RPGs and hate FPSes" and then getting mad because I bought Wolfenstein and didn't like it. :) However, that purchase is a simple choice that the only way I could screw up is if I did just randomly grab games off the shelf: Wolfenstein is very, very clearly billed as an FPS and hence I know whether or not I am likely to enjoy the game just by looking at the box. Character development should be the same: if there are some choices to make and one is going to be better for my tastes/needs than the others, that should be abundantly clear up front without needing to scum forums to find out what the best choices are.

When it comes to combinations, it's just better to use directed development and eliminate incompatible choices rather than forcing the player to figure out which don't work together the hard way. _Especially_ if you don't allow the player to correct mistakes via restating.
20 Jul, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 162nd comment:
Votes: 0
If you have a system that removes choice [1], then indeed my complaint is removed because you aren't really making full choices at random – you can't. So I agree with that. My statement is made from the premise that choices don't remove other choices. I'm not sure I agree that all combinations should be equally viable, though, especially when you consider your style of play as another choice to be made. Your example of having ranged combat skills but insisting on running around with swords is a good one.

In other words, I'm arguing that a coherent overall strategy of game play should always beat a strategy based on completely random choices, assuming of course that you want there to be any skill in the game. (That assumption doesn't always hold, incidentally.)

EDIT:
[1] that's not meant to sound bad, by the way – I'm not necessarily placing inherent value on fully open choice, not at the moment at least. :wink:
20 Jul, 2009, Fizban wrote in the 163rd comment:
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I'm somewhere in between. I like stats to typically max in the 18-25 range but I like armor, damroll and hitpoints to vary enough that the difference in their values isn't negligable between two characters with very different equipment. Ideally this means 5-10k hp at max level when equipped as a tank and 2-5k as a caster-ish class.
20 Jul, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 164th comment:
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David Haley said:
In other words, I'm arguing that a coherent overall strategy of game play should always beat a strategy based on completely random choices, assuming of course that you want there to be any skill in the game.

Well Elanthis's original proposal was that it "…should not be possible to create a better character than someone who's just making choices based on how fun he believes the options are" (a statement you heartily disagreed with at the time), and that was the premise I designed my Titan class around.

I've certainly no interest in extending it to gameplay in general. The idea was to have a class for newbies and first-time players who don't enjoy (or aren't very good at) designing a decent character, not to have an option that removes the need for player skill entirely.
20 Jul, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 165th comment:
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OK, sure. If you are just picking stuff on random, you're dumb. I don't think any player does that though.

The idea is that if you are creating a character using reasonable (if inexperienced) guesses as to what would work, it should work, or the game should actively attempt to help you with your inexperience. It should be easy to make reasonable guesses using whatever information is necessary to make those choices. It's reasonable to think that spreading out skills to cover a wider base of challenges is a good idea, for example. If your game punishes generalization, however, then it should reflect that in the choices it provides. Instead of saying "we'll let players spread points out and punish them when they do" just don't let players spread points out.

Or at the very least tell the player what they should be doing and why. Flat out say IN THEIR FACE that specialization is mandatory in your game to get anywhere. Warn them if they start generalizing. Don't foce them to dig into mechanics and numbers just to find out that Psychic Wave of Death is a cruel joke of a skill while Rabbit Cruncher does 80% more damage and costs half as many skill points.

Quote
In other words, I'm arguing that a coherent overall strategy of game play should always beat a strategy based on completely random choices, assuming of course that you want there to be any skill in the game.


And I continue to assert that character building is not game play. It's meta-game-play. Combat is game play. Puzzle solving is game play. Exploration is game play. Role playing is gaming play. Trap disarming is game play.

Those all require skill. Letting a player lose the encounter because he doesn't have the skill or strategy to defeat them is fine.

Assigning points to a character sheet requires zero skill, however. I'm sure there's a ton of people who think they're L33t Character Builders and are gods among mice, but they're all chumps. All they're doing is either (a) copying proven builds from someone else, or (b) randomly guessing over and over until they find the magic combination. That's it. That's not skill.

If lock picking in your game were anything like character development, here's how it would work. The player would pick a combination. It would fail, he'd get punished for it somehow. A little while later he comes back and tries a different combination. It fails, he gets punished. Comes back a little while later and tries another combination. Repeat until he finally guesses the right one. Other players just get on the forums, search for "Fier Dunjun Lokpik lol," copy the combination down, and run through the locked door with barely a pause. The "good" players would still just be randomly guessing, but they'd skip the obviously unlikely combinations (1111, 2222, 1234, etc.), but it's still not anything that requires skill or strategy.

We also come back again to the point that losing a combat because of poor strategy means maybe a few hours of lost work, while building an inadequate character over the course of 50 levels probably means days, weeks, or months of lost work. Losing is fine. Losing _everything_ pisses most people off quite a bit (which is why even my own games don't do perma-death, even though I personally am a fan of it).

You can let players reassign skills to work around a skill system that let's them build broken characters, but then you still aren't making character development strategic. It just means you let people "guess again" with a much shorter turn around time. Plus it opens all kinds of other holes, like how WoW players respec based on the dungeon they're raiding, making the character development not on non-strategic but also entirely pointless (if I can change what I am to fit whatever situation, why the hell bother wasting any time into picking what I am)?

I am totally in favor of making players use strategy. I'm totally in favor of letting the better player "win." I am against the idea of forcing players to make "strategic choices" which just boil down to "pick the magic combination of 10,000 skills that the developers threw at you even though only a handful of combinations actually work worth a crap, and if you screw up them you just piss away 200 hours of your life."
20 Jul, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 166th comment:
Votes: 0
I guess there's a potentially philosophical question to be asked, then, about what "strategy" actually is. To me you're kind of defining the problem away by arguing that one set of choices relates to "strategy" and another doesn't. I'm not sure why commonly accepted "good" combat choices are not subject to the same randomization and copying that character creation is.

It's odd to me that you're arguing against my preferences – of avoiding random choices – by giving examples of people making random choices. Surely you do not think the system I think follows from what I've been saying involves stabbing in the dark and being forced to randomly sample the search space?
20 Jul, 2009, Fizban wrote in the 167th comment:
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elanthis said:
If your game punishes generalization, however, then it should reflect that in the choices it provides. Instead of saying "we'll let players spread points out and punish them when they do" just don't let players spread points out.


In general I agree, but I'd personally prefer a disclaimer explaining that spreading skills may be a bad idea over not letting me do so. Why? Sometimes I (and I'm sure other players as well) intentionally make a character that will be difficult to play simply for the challenge of trying to level it.
20 Jul, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 168th comment:
Votes: 0
elanthis said:
And I continue to assert that character building is not game play. It's meta-game-play.

I'm afraid I don't agree - nor do I think that 'meta-game-play' is a useful distinction. In a competitive mud, knowing how to build a decent character can be just as important as knowing how to play it. A good comparison would be Magic the Gathering, where you need to know how to build a decent deck as well as how to use it.

My Titan class is aimed at the sort of player who prefers using a prebuilt deck when playing M:tG.

elanthis said:
Assigning points to a character sheet requires zero skill, however. I'm sure there's a ton of people who think they're L33t Character Builders and are gods among mice, but they're all chumps. All they're doing is either (a) copying proven builds from someone else, or (b) randomly guessing over and over until they find the magic combination. That's it. That's not skill.

Er, no, that's certainly not how people design characters. To use the M:tG example again, people don't build winning decks by randomly selecting 60 cards over and over until they find the magic combination - they learn what each card does, identify combinations of cards that work well together, and carefully optimise their decks accordingly. Building a character in a competitive mud is no different, and it certainly does take skill (although a different type of skill to actually using the character).
20 Jul, 2009, Fizban wrote in the 169th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
elanthis said:
And I continue to assert that character building is not game play. It's meta-game-play.

I'm afraid I don't agree - nor do I think that 'meta-game-play' is a useful distinction. In a competitive mud, knowing how to build a decent character can be just as important as knowing how to play it. A good comparison would be Magic the Gathering, where you need to know how to build a decent deck as well as how to use it.

My Titan class is aimed at the sort of player who prefers using a prebuilt deck when playing M:tG.

elanthis said:
Assigning points to a character sheet requires zero skill, however. I'm sure there's a ton of people who think they're L33t Character Builders and are gods among mice, but they're all chumps. All they're doing is either (a) copying proven builds from someone else, or (b) randomly guessing over and over until they find the magic combination. That's it. That's not skill.

Er, no, that's certainly not how people design characters. To use the M:tG example again, people don't build winning decks by randomly selecting 60 cards over and over until they find the magic combination - they learn what each card does, identify combinations of cards that work well together, and carefully optimise their decks accordingly. Building a character in a competitive mud is no different, and it certainly does take skill (although a different type of skill to actually using the character).


Interesting, KaVir plays MtG? I played in tournaments in the area for years, but finally found about 5 years ago that buying new cards to be able to play in Type 2 tournaments and do well just got too expensive.
20 Jul, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 170th comment:
Votes: 0
Fizban said:
Interesting, KaVir plays MtG?

Not for about 12 years or so, but I've still got a load of cards, including some fairly decent decks I (non-randomly) built myself. I thought it was a well-designed game, and I drew inspiration from the deck-building concept when I designed the classes in my mud.
20 Jul, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 171st comment:
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You make a compelling point. Very compelling. Think much upon that I shall.
21 Jul, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 172nd comment:
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It's funny actually because I was thinking about MtG too, I just never got around to articulating it. It's one of the examples I have in mind of why the planning phase can have just as much 'strategy' as the execution phase – assuming we actually mean the same thing by strategy, because you seemed to indicate you view planning as meta-gaming of sorts. There are many examples of this in games, really: (well-designed) strategy games require you to learn about and understand mixed-unit tactics; even games like D&D strongly favor people who correctly prepare for adventuring in terms of choosing spells and equipment; and so on. In a sense, character building – choosing combinations within one individual as opposed to combinations of roles to build a party – is just another form of preparation, a building toward a coherent whole.

I really have trouble buying that true randomness should or even can be effective. And I use that word very deliberately, just in case that wasn't clear up until now.

Incidentally if you have time I wouldn't mind a (even brief) look into the distinction you draw between gaming and meta-gaming.
21 Jul, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 173rd comment:
Votes: 0
I don't know about elanthis, but I consider it meta-gaming when you have to start using out-of-game resources to stay competitive with your peers. Many current MMO's fall into this category. World of Warcraft is an easy game to play, however once you get to the endgame raiding content, it becomes increasingly difficult to just "play". To be able to work effectively in teams to defeat this content, players have to mix-max their skills, run through earlier content to cherry pick gear, and either read strategy guides done by others who have completed the new dungeon, or be willing to trial-and-error it over and over until they figure it out.

To me, the first folks through who spend the time to trial-and-error the dungeons and learn how to defeat each boss by dying over and over are playing the game. The other 99% of the players who read their write ups are meta-gaming. There's nothing inherently wrong with that… but it puts a barrier up that the casual player can't cross without meta-gaming.

Because mix/maxing and number crunching are often a big part of meta-gaming, it also forces the casual player to obsess over numbers rather than playing the game. I know I have to get 2000 DPS in order to take part in certain raids, because if I do less than that, I'll get kicked. So, instead of enjoying the gameplay, I have to read forums and crunch numbers to know exactly which weapons I need, what enchants to put on them, what gems to socket into them, what other gear I have to get to add the right stats and so forth, so that magic number is acceptable to my peers.
21 Jul, 2009, Grimble wrote in the 174th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Things are broken if one specialty always beats another specialty, yes.

What if your game system is based on the old rock/paper/scissors approach, to encourage team play? Many successful RTS games of the past 15 years employed this approach via different units with different specialties.
21 Jul, 2009, Ssolvarain wrote in the 175th comment:
Votes: 0
I did warn you. Read my signature.

And also, when I referred to optimization, it was mainly aimed at my disgust with MMOs. My example would be a cookie-cutter set of gear for an endgame character, with each profession/class using the same thing because the number crunchers of the game have ran all the numbers. To compete, everyone follows suit. The same is true of many muds. Muds with "leveling gear" piss me off to no extent. The newbie character on such a mud is forced to collect not one, but two sets of gear with which to level because some bonehead thought that level advancement should be tied to modified stats, not the logical choice of base stats.

/endrant
I be a tired pirate.
21 Jul, 2009, Runter wrote in the 176th comment:
Votes: 0
Grimble said:
David Haley said:
Things are broken if one specialty always beats another specialty, yes.

What if your game system is based on the old rock/paper/scissors approach, to encourage team play? Many successful RTS games of the past 15 years employed this approach via different units with different specialties.


Depends on the type of game you want to make. Obviously in the game Rock Paper Scissors this is how it was implemented, for example. I'm not sure I specifically enjoy or find the concept endearing.

David also stressed the 'always beats' part. As opposed to 'has an advantage against.' Quite a different thing when we're talking about matching players up against each other.
21 Jul, 2009, Dean wrote in the 177th comment:
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Isn't, at the end of the day, just about every combat system really a form of rock, paper, scissors, albeit a more advanced/complicated one? :lol:
21 Jul, 2009, Runter wrote in the 178th comment:
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Dean said:
Isn't, at the end of the day, just about every combat system really a form of rock, paper, scissors, albeit a more advanced/complicated one? :lol:


No.
21 Jul, 2009, Dean wrote in the 179th comment:
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Wrong answer Runter. :tongue:
21 Jul, 2009, Runter wrote in the 180th comment:
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Dean said:
Wrong answer Runter. :tongue:


Well, conceptually anything can constitute the actual process of a combat system. For example, 2 people rolling dice and the one who rolls the highest killing the other. One having a bigger set of dice than the other makes it more likely they will win. They'll probably get a bigger total. But that's not really a rock paper scissors system. Or another example of something conceptually (albeit it ridiculous) possible is playing hands of poker with the pot each hand being your life points. First player who is out of life points dying. That isn't rock paper scissors.

I think you'd be right in an assertion that a lot of [mud combat] systems are similar [to rock paper scissors] . I just don't find those specific similarities endearing.
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