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ANY CHARACTER'S DEATH = GAME OVER
Posts
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
LockeZ
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CloseAn idea was brought up in another topic about making it so that any party member's death resulted in a game over, instead of the more typical style of only getting a game over after all members are dead. They were talking about the story when discussing reasons to do this, but I want to talk about the gameplay.
Very few games actually do this. The Fire Emblem series practically does this, by making it so all deaths are permanent - the game doesn't typically force you to restart the battle, but 99% of the time, you will. So figuring out what side-effects this would have in a more complex game is largely theoretical.
In Fire Emblem you can definitely see one way it influences gameplay design - the game's tactical combat gives the player the ability to partially choose which characters get hit by which enemies, and forces the player to take advantage of this. The player makes sure they only ever make each character fight enemies that they're defensively strong against, unless they can kill the enemy before it gets a turn. If the game didn't provide these options 100% of the time, it would be unplayable.
So as a game designer, it seems like you'd probably need to make sure the player can control who gets hurt by which enemies. In a non-tactical RPG, this would probably be done by some kind of threat/tanking system, rather than by positioning like it's done in Fire Emblem. But if one character is taking all the hits, like in a typical tanking system, does that defeat the purpose of such a system?
If the party members were all equally hardy and had no particular defensive strengths or weaknesses, that level of tanking/threat control wouldn't be as necessary, but the game would also be a lot more randomly punishing. If there are four party members and three enemies, there's a 1/64 chance for all three enemies to attack the same character. That is really obnoxious and feels like bullshit when it happens. Despite how rare it is, the player would always have to spend every action assuming this would happen, because if it does and the character dies, it's a game over. So they would spend a lot of turns healing anyone who's below 100% HP, and defending with anyone whose HP is below the maximum total damage all enemies can do combined if they all use their strongest attacks. If the enemies can crit, it gets even stupider.
How would you handle a system that gives a game over when one character dies? What other problems do you think it would face, and what are some ideas to deal with them? Would you treat status effects differently, or what?
Very few games actually do this. The Fire Emblem series practically does this, by making it so all deaths are permanent - the game doesn't typically force you to restart the battle, but 99% of the time, you will. So figuring out what side-effects this would have in a more complex game is largely theoretical.
In Fire Emblem you can definitely see one way it influences gameplay design - the game's tactical combat gives the player the ability to partially choose which characters get hit by which enemies, and forces the player to take advantage of this. The player makes sure they only ever make each character fight enemies that they're defensively strong against, unless they can kill the enemy before it gets a turn. If the game didn't provide these options 100% of the time, it would be unplayable.
So as a game designer, it seems like you'd probably need to make sure the player can control who gets hurt by which enemies. In a non-tactical RPG, this would probably be done by some kind of threat/tanking system, rather than by positioning like it's done in Fire Emblem. But if one character is taking all the hits, like in a typical tanking system, does that defeat the purpose of such a system?
If the party members were all equally hardy and had no particular defensive strengths or weaknesses, that level of tanking/threat control wouldn't be as necessary, but the game would also be a lot more randomly punishing. If there are four party members and three enemies, there's a 1/64 chance for all three enemies to attack the same character. That is really obnoxious and feels like bullshit when it happens. Despite how rare it is, the player would always have to spend every action assuming this would happen, because if it does and the character dies, it's a game over. So they would spend a lot of turns healing anyone who's below 100% HP, and defending with anyone whose HP is below the maximum total damage all enemies can do combined if they all use their strongest attacks. If the enemies can crit, it gets even stupider.
How would you handle a system that gives a game over when one character dies? What other problems do you think it would face, and what are some ideas to deal with them? Would you treat status effects differently, or what?
Given your explanation, some modifications to the enemy A.I. might be in order. This might sound... avant garde... but maybe, never have the player lose. So, even though players know that death is only a character away, it never truly happens. Players won't know that enemy A.I. will never target a character about to die, and as a result, will still feel thrill. Until they become suspicious. After, say, five rounds of purposefully careless action, the rules are rescinded, and the player can receive a game over.
Less deceitful, might be assigning the player a battery of defensive skills which double as offensive skills, if damage is received in a certain way. This tactic won't allow players to believe that their turns have been wasted with meaningless healing or stagnant defense.
Less deceitful, might be assigning the player a battery of defensive skills which double as offensive skills, if damage is received in a certain way. This tactic won't allow players to believe that their turns have been wasted with meaningless healing or stagnant defense.
fire emblem is dumb (except for the 3ds one with its casual mode that makes the game playable).
i would just not do it? it's really limiting, i feel, and i wouldn't want to even play it personally. it's very similar to the fuckery that is persona 3/4 and ffxiii where if the lead character dies, you lose. it's just unfun, and although persona 4 somewhat alleviates it, it's still an incredibly arbitrary and bullshit mechanic.
maybe if the game was really short and very well-designed i'd play it, but otherwise i just don't think a "any death = game over" mechanic is worthwhile. what does it add? a constant finger hovering over the f12 key?
if i had to do something thematic, like a bunch of telepaths linked together, then i might do severe penalties for a character dying (like everybody gets a stacking -40% to all stats for each KO'd char -- you MIGHT be able to pull through!!!!), but a straight-up game over? i don't even have traditional game overs in most of my games, let alone arbitrary/bullshit ones.
edit: zachary, i've thought about a "cheating" computer before and the more i've thought it over the more i've come to the belief that lying to the player ((((about gameplay)))) is the absolute worst thing that you can do as a designer. expections and consistency are incredibly important, so you must have a visible and transparent ruleset to build the game off of.
i would just not do it? it's really limiting, i feel, and i wouldn't want to even play it personally. it's very similar to the fuckery that is persona 3/4 and ffxiii where if the lead character dies, you lose. it's just unfun, and although persona 4 somewhat alleviates it, it's still an incredibly arbitrary and bullshit mechanic.
maybe if the game was really short and very well-designed i'd play it, but otherwise i just don't think a "any death = game over" mechanic is worthwhile. what does it add? a constant finger hovering over the f12 key?
if i had to do something thematic, like a bunch of telepaths linked together, then i might do severe penalties for a character dying (like everybody gets a stacking -40% to all stats for each KO'd char -- you MIGHT be able to pull through!!!!), but a straight-up game over? i don't even have traditional game overs in most of my games, let alone arbitrary/bullshit ones.
edit: zachary, i've thought about a "cheating" computer before and the more i've thought it over the more i've come to the belief that lying to the player ((((about gameplay)))) is the absolute worst thing that you can do as a designer. expections and consistency are incredibly important, so you must have a visible and transparent ruleset to build the game off of.
Ooh, interesting. Lemme take a shot at this...
First off, while few games design around a death explicitly meaning "game over", there are a number of games where a death can mean loss is inevitable. In an MMO raid, an early mistake & death might put you so far behind in DPS or healing that you might as well wipe; maybe a death later on will be manageable, but it's still a huge loss. Same with Fire Emblem: you can't afford to keep letting your heroes die, because in the later missions you need as much strength as you can get. I think these games might give us some information on what works and what doesn't. Really, this isn't that different than most RPGs without the ability to revive mid-battle. Losing a party member means losing actions and utility, and unless you can revive or you're on the precipice of victory, it probably means a loss.
(Fire Emblem's is weak, though, because it totally encourages save spamming.)
Anyway, in a game where death explicitly equals game over...
From a gameplay perspective, this gets interesting when your enemies are threatening to take out your weakest links, and find the holes in your defense. You'd want to design a battle system where you reactively and proactively protect members of the party that need it. The scariest bosses are going to be the ones with the AI to take advantage of your lose condition, or ones that have abilities that can take advantage of it.
A game like this will suffer unless there is some sort of predictability to who is going to take damage. Without it, a hero death caused by a spike of randomly-targeted damage will feel a lot like bad luck. Tanking is the common approach to dealing with this. With tanking, you can design four different types of targeting abilities for your enemies that are interesting and still non-random:
1. Big single-target hits that target the tank
2. AoEs that hit the entire party
3. Small / non-damage hits that hit randomly, but inflict statuses that don't immediately kill the target and are manageable in other ways (Ex. Poison, Doom, Sleep)
4. Single-target hits that target heroes other than the tank, but are still predictable (ex. Turn 1: enemy "locks on" healer, Turn 2: spike damage to healer)
This is the way I'm approaching most enemy skills in Bossgame (where a single hero death is the beginning of a slippery slope to defeat).I've found that this gives you a variety of interesting abilities to work with that still feel fair, because they're predictable.
Other than that, you probably want a variety of heals or shields across a couple characters. Tank switching might become necessary (and can be fun!) when one tank gets too close to death for comfort. I'd design damage/healing to be less "spiky" and more "sustained" - in general, you should be slowly approaching death for the entirety of the battle, and fighting to stay alive. When the final hit lands and kills a hero, it shouldn't feel like it came out of nowhere. This makes the whole battle up to that point feel like it counts more.
I'm interested to hear what other people think of this, too! This could be a really interesting system to design around.
First off, while few games design around a death explicitly meaning "game over", there are a number of games where a death can mean loss is inevitable. In an MMO raid, an early mistake & death might put you so far behind in DPS or healing that you might as well wipe; maybe a death later on will be manageable, but it's still a huge loss. Same with Fire Emblem: you can't afford to keep letting your heroes die, because in the later missions you need as much strength as you can get. I think these games might give us some information on what works and what doesn't. Really, this isn't that different than most RPGs without the ability to revive mid-battle. Losing a party member means losing actions and utility, and unless you can revive or you're on the precipice of victory, it probably means a loss.
(Fire Emblem's is weak, though, because it totally encourages save spamming.)
Anyway, in a game where death explicitly equals game over...
From a gameplay perspective, this gets interesting when your enemies are threatening to take out your weakest links, and find the holes in your defense. You'd want to design a battle system where you reactively and proactively protect members of the party that need it. The scariest bosses are going to be the ones with the AI to take advantage of your lose condition, or ones that have abilities that can take advantage of it.
A game like this will suffer unless there is some sort of predictability to who is going to take damage. Without it, a hero death caused by a spike of randomly-targeted damage will feel a lot like bad luck. Tanking is the common approach to dealing with this. With tanking, you can design four different types of targeting abilities for your enemies that are interesting and still non-random:
1. Big single-target hits that target the tank
2. AoEs that hit the entire party
3. Small / non-damage hits that hit randomly, but inflict statuses that don't immediately kill the target and are manageable in other ways (Ex. Poison, Doom, Sleep)
4. Single-target hits that target heroes other than the tank, but are still predictable (ex. Turn 1: enemy "locks on" healer, Turn 2: spike damage to healer)
This is the way I'm approaching most enemy skills in Bossgame (where a single hero death is the beginning of a slippery slope to defeat).I've found that this gives you a variety of interesting abilities to work with that still feel fair, because they're predictable.
Other than that, you probably want a variety of heals or shields across a couple characters. Tank switching might become necessary (and can be fun!) when one tank gets too close to death for comfort. I'd design damage/healing to be less "spiky" and more "sustained" - in general, you should be slowly approaching death for the entirety of the battle, and fighting to stay alive. When the final hit lands and kills a hero, it shouldn't feel like it came out of nowhere. This makes the whole battle up to that point feel like it counts more.
I'm interested to hear what other people think of this, too! This could be a really interesting system to design around.
LightningLord2
230
In a Fire Emblem approach, I feel this is poorly done - it basically makes any tactic beyond overlevelling a power unit and/or extreme turtling much less viable (no deep strikes, no baiting etc.).
What I think would work is an approach as in D&D - there, your characters who reach 0 HP don't die immediately - they'll fall unconcious and constantly lose HP until stabilized. If they go to -10 (3.5) or half their max HP as negative (4), they die for real. This would give you some time to finish the battle fast or help the hurt character, but having too little durability means your character will still die immediately.
This system is more forgiving in Final Fantasy Tactics - downed characters can be raised for three turns before they die for real (due to how the turns work, none of your character may get an opportunity to do so). They can't be whacked to make them die faster, making the system rather forgiving in this regard.
Lastly, a few RPGs such as Monster Girl Quest use this system because your party is just one character.
What I think would work is an approach as in D&D - there, your characters who reach 0 HP don't die immediately - they'll fall unconcious and constantly lose HP until stabilized. If they go to -10 (3.5) or half their max HP as negative (4), they die for real. This would give you some time to finish the battle fast or help the hurt character, but having too little durability means your character will still die immediately.
This system is more forgiving in Final Fantasy Tactics - downed characters can be raised for three turns before they die for real (due to how the turns work, none of your character may get an opportunity to do so). They can't be whacked to make them die faster, making the system rather forgiving in this regard.
Lastly, a few RPGs such as Monster Girl Quest use this system because your party is just one character.
author=LightningLord2
Lastly, a few RPGs such as Monster Girl Quest use this system because your party is just one character.
Yeah, pretty much this. I would reduce the number of heroes to 1 and call it a roguelike.
I don't think I've ever seen a game do this well. Even with FE I only reset when I lose somebody important, I send the dunces and failures out to die all the time 
What's that, a Swordsmaster with a Killing Edge but out of range of a one-hit kill? Well I could gamble on some awful crit chance, try to find somebody to tank him, or I'll send Guy and his dumb level 1 face up to lure him out! You can do it Guy!
But really I'm with Craze on this one. Some of the funnest fights I've had in games (tabletop, rpgs, srpgs, etc.) is snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Losing one dude and the game deciding I lost is completely antithetical to that experience.
But really I'm with Craze on this one. Some of the funnest fights I've had in games (tabletop, rpgs, srpgs, etc.) is snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Losing one dude and the game deciding I lost is completely antithetical to that experience.
I've had enough trouble in SMT/Persona games with the MC dying leading to Game Overs. Multiplying that frustration by the number of party members would result in a lot of broken controllers. And probably the TV too.
I can totally picture this being super fun in a battle system where you have full or partial control over your positioning and said positioning affects majorly the effects of skills and magic, as well as stats.
having a free map and characters walking through this map each turn and switching places with eachother, coupled with skills that depend on that, can be interesting -- such as a mage with a Healing Breeze skill that targets a circular area and pushes all characters out of that area a little, or a Magnet Barrier that pulls characters in to the battier / token and increases their defense relative to the proximity to said barrier.
Spells that tether an enemy to the floor, revive dolls that prevent game overs, damage roof barriers, all sorts of stuff could be fun in such a system.
Give the players enough tools at hand and make them think about the placement, because sloppy placement = game over, and voilà, this game system is suddenly rather fun I think?
having a free map and characters walking through this map each turn and switching places with eachother, coupled with skills that depend on that, can be interesting -- such as a mage with a Healing Breeze skill that targets a circular area and pushes all characters out of that area a little, or a Magnet Barrier that pulls characters in to the battier / token and increases their defense relative to the proximity to said barrier.
Spells that tether an enemy to the floor, revive dolls that prevent game overs, damage roof barriers, all sorts of stuff could be fun in such a system.
Give the players enough tools at hand and make them think about the placement, because sloppy placement = game over, and voilà, this game system is suddenly rather fun I think?
I mean, it's only considered "automatic" because it goes against the standard way RPGs work, right? But if you consider a game or a world where death and injury are permanent things and a character falling in combat is a Serious Matter, a "Death = Loss" mechanic would make perfect sense, and reinforces the gravity of the setting. And, if you design your game around that mechanic, the balance and gameplay would be totally manageable and wouldn't feel unfair. It definitely couldn't just be plopped into any generic JRPG, but I imagine you could build a game around it to great effect.
It can be super frustrating in the games I've seen it in up until now, but I think that's due to the generally meaningless combat in a lot of JRPGs.
It can be super frustrating in the games I've seen it in up until now, but I think that's due to the generally meaningless combat in a lot of JRPGs.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
It's not "automatic." Not any more than any other game over. It's game over when you run out of HP and die. This is a thing that often feels like it SHOULD be a lose state in many games.
The topic originally came up due to the idea of not wanting to deal with the story implications of a "dead" status that makes death meaningless in your world, or even a fainted/unconscious status that forces the rest of the party to carry your unconscious body around from battle to battle. But I can also imagine at least two really good gameplay reasons to have this kind of lose condition. 1) Extra difficulty, which is obvious enough to not need more explanation. 2) Wanting to create the impression that the player is playing "perfectly" when they win. If some part of your game's aesthetic would benefit from giving the impression that every victory is a flawless victory, then this could be a really good mechanic to utilize.
There are definitely problems to overcome! I don't think it's fair to just assume that means it's not worth doing.
The topic originally came up due to the idea of not wanting to deal with the story implications of a "dead" status that makes death meaningless in your world, or even a fainted/unconscious status that forces the rest of the party to carry your unconscious body around from battle to battle. But I can also imagine at least two really good gameplay reasons to have this kind of lose condition. 1) Extra difficulty, which is obvious enough to not need more explanation. 2) Wanting to create the impression that the player is playing "perfectly" when they win. If some part of your game's aesthetic would benefit from giving the impression that every victory is a flawless victory, then this could be a really good mechanic to utilize.
There are definitely problems to overcome! I don't think it's fair to just assume that means it's not worth doing.
I'm not sure if this idea is any good or not, but what if you gave the entire party a shared HP pool, so then it's totally all or nothing if you win or lose? I know that carries plenty of its own problems, though.
I kinda wanted to do that, while having characters still have separate defensive stats. That could be interesting.
The easiest way to manage something like this would be to tone down both damage taken and healing output. Have attacks take off ~1/10th of a character's HP instead of the usual ~1/3-1/4. More importantly, make all healing gradual. Maybe characters regenerate when they haven't been hit for a while, or maybe all healing spells are over time. Just make healing steady instead of allowing characters to spike to full health.
Then, the game becomes about passing around enemy aggro as you let wounded characters sustain back up from their "turn" tanking. It's an unusual paradigm, but not an unplayable one by any means.
Then, the game becomes about passing around enemy aggro as you let wounded characters sustain back up from their "turn" tanking. It's an unusual paradigm, but not an unplayable one by any means.
Runekn
0
I guess one way would be to implement dying=game over it is that running out of HP doesn't mean death, but reducing a usually tiny amount of "Life Points" that kills if it goes to 0 like in the SaGa series, or maybe have a "injury counter" that makes the character weaker until they finally kick the bucket. Either way, it should be harder to increase LP/heal injuries. Although that could lead into bad play turning the game into a downhill slope difficulty-wise with limited resources to recover, or just a annoying mechanic if abundant.
Also maybe have disposable non-playable minions, and fewer actual party members. Because anyone that isn't a main character aren't important*.
*Granted, I'm one of those people who resets in Fire Emblem or even X-COM if generic guy #23 dies.
Also maybe have disposable non-playable minions, and fewer actual party members. Because anyone that isn't a main character aren't important*.
*Granted, I'm one of those people who resets in Fire Emblem or even X-COM if generic guy #23 dies.
author=slashIf you want to consider a more realistic setting where death and injury are permanent...why not have the game set up that once you die, you can never play the game again?
I mean, it's only considered "automatic" because it goes against the standard way RPGs work, right? But if you consider a game or a world where death and injury are permanent things and a character falling in combat is a Serious Matter, a "Death = Loss" mechanic would make perfect sense, and reinforces the gravity of the setting. And, if you design your game around that mechanic, the balance and gameplay would be totally manageable and wouldn't feel unfair. It definitely couldn't just be plopped into any generic JRPG, but I imagine you could build a game around it to great effect.
It can be super frustrating in the games I've seen it in up until now, but I think that's due to the generally meaningless combat in a lot of JRPGs.
Actually I totally want to make a game like that now, but my point is beyond a certain extent I think it's important to remember that games are, in fact, games. I wouldn't play a game that wasn't fun (praying Sailerius doesn't see this), and if it outright annoyed me, with say, one character death = Game Over, I'd just stop playing it.
I've had lots of genuinely engaging battles in SMT games end horribly because enemies got lucky, Crit'd the MC and then KO'd them in the same turn, leading to Game Overs...I wouldn't mind nearly as much if my other characters could still act.
Yellow Magic
If you want to consider a more realistic setting where death and injury are permanent...why not have the game set up that once you die, you can never play the game again?
Fun is relative. Handholding isn't fun. Persona really doesn't do it right and I really don't understand the point of it doing that but that in itself is still no reason to automatically dismiss games where any death = ko.
As with any other gameplay mechanic, it just has to be done right.
author=LockeZMost of my games are centric on three or four characters, I don't see myself tackling this in a long time, but it does sound cool, and how I do love killing my characters thus.
An idea was brought up in another topic about making it so that any party member's death resulted in a game over, instead of the more typical style of only getting a game over after all members are dead. They were talking about the story when discussing reasons to do this, but I want to talk about the gameplay.
Very few games actually do this. The Fire Emblem series practically does this, by making it so all deaths are permanent - the game doesn't typically force you to restart the battle, but 99% of the time, you will. So figuring out what side-effects this would have in a more complex game is largely theoretical.
In Fire Emblem you can definitely see one way it influences gameplay design - the game's tactical combat gives the player the ability to partially choose which characters get hit by which enemies, and forces the player to take advantage of this. The player makes sure they only ever make each character fight enemies that they're defensively strong against, unless they can kill the enemy before it gets a turn. If the game didn't provide these options 100% of the time, it would be unplayable.
So as a game designer, it seems like you'd probably need to make sure the player can control who gets hurt by which enemies. In a non-tactical RPG, this would probably be done by some kind of threat/tanking system, rather than by positioning like it's done in Fire Emblem. But if one character is taking all the hits, like in a typical tanking system, does that defeat the purpose of such a system?
If the party members were all equally hardy and had no particular defensive strengths or weaknesses, that level of tanking/threat control wouldn't be as necessary, but the game would also be a lot more randomly punishing. If there are four party members and three enemies, there's a 1/64 chance for all three enemies to attack the same character. That is really obnoxious and feels like bullshit when it happens. Despite how rare it is, the player would always have to spend every action assuming this would happen, because if it does and the character dies, it's a game over. So they would spend a lot of turns healing anyone who's below 100% HP, and defending with anyone whose HP is below the maximum total damage all enemies can do combined if they all use their strongest attacks. If the enemies can crit, it gets even stupider.
How would you handle a system that gives a game over when one character dies? What other problems do you think it would face, and what are some ideas to deal with them? Would you treat status effects differently, or what?
LightningLord2
230
I just remembered a game that actually has this system (sort of) - The Lost Vikings gives you a game over screen if you reach the end of the level with only one or two players - you have to make it with all three to get further.
