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WHY DOES DYING HAVE TO SUCK?
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LouisCyphre
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Why is this bad?
Yeah, I questioned it.
Everyone hates dying in an RPG. Go on, admit it. You're not alone - no one likes losing thirty minutes of progress and having to re-watch that ten minute cutscene just to get back to that boss that casts instant death on the party. We see RPGs become easier and easier just to prevent you from having to reload your save file, trod through that loading screen, and watch that scene more than you have to. After all, what fun is a game where you have trouble proceeding, right?
Let's think for a second here: what causes a game over in an RPG? A challenging battle, the kind most RPG fans claim they want.
At least Matador kicks your ass with style. Now to re-crawl that dungeon.
Players want hard battles, but don't want to redo everything between between the save and the fight itself. Seems simple enough. So why don't RPGs deliver that: challenging battles with minimal penalties for dying?
Granted, some do buck this trend. When you're erased in The World Ends With You, you're presented with the option to retry the battle, retry the battle on easy difficulty, escape the battle (which always succeeds), or quit to the title screen. FF13 pulls you out of the battle entirely and lets you open your menu to rethink your strategy. FF6 sent you back to your last save point but allowed you to keep your experience, helping take the sting out of lost progress. The Pokémon games kick you back to the last
Now, the question at hand - why aren't we minimizing penalties for losing?
It's been said time and again in this community that holding the player's interest is vital when there's no investment in playing our games. If a player loses to one of our bosses, they're not obligated by a $40 or $60 purchase to re-watch whatever pre-battle cutscene; they can just recycle-bin the offending game and move to the next piece of freeware entertainment. Allowing a player free attempts at a boss - or any other fight for that matter - can stop them from dropping your game cold when they hit a patch of bad luck.
What does free retries let you do as a developer? For one, regular enemies can pose a threat without being innately frustrating. You can have marauding horrors that players will actually tackle head-on, instead of mashing Escape to preserve their precious progress. You can get away with being a little bit tougher, a little bit meaner, because you don't have to fear the player ragequitting your game nearly as much. Keeping a player playing is the number one dilemma in amateur game design, after all, and anything that helps keep players in control is too good not to have.
So? What's your excuse for not having retries on your battles?
rm2k3 sucks and it was too difficult
(If you die in Demon's Gate you go back to town with all used items intact (if you had the latest version, earlier versions could wipe your inventory under certain conditions). You'd have to get back to where you were (usually not a problem) as a small slap on the wrist but that's it. I probably could've done it with 2k3 but warping the player back to town was much easier and less "gonna kill myself" inducing.)
New plan is to still have this with FF13's mid-battle retry menu for maximum accessibility. No reason why not to, it's better for everyone and if you really want to go back to the loading screen after a defeat you can just select "Load Game". Everybody wins! :D
(If you die in Demon's Gate you go back to town with all used items intact (if you had the latest version, earlier versions could wipe your inventory under certain conditions). You'd have to get back to where you were (usually not a problem) as a small slap on the wrist but that's it. I probably could've done it with 2k3 but warping the player back to town was much easier and less "gonna kill myself" inducing.)
New plan is to still have this with FF13's mid-battle retry menu for maximum accessibility. No reason why not to, it's better for everyone and if you really want to go back to the loading screen after a defeat you can just select "Load Game". Everybody wins! :D
Shinan
4314
Yeah the "Try to avoid it" is generally a good answer. Though I'm all in favour of not punishing the player. I've never been a fan of difficult games (and the trend in commercial games is to make games easier. Something that people all over the place complain about... "Back in my days I had to play the first level fifty times before I beat it"). Not having the looming game over screen does mean that occasionally you can just start gaming the game and whack at something for a while and then retrying. (Like in Bioshock...)
Of course talking about mine own battles I don't... uh... make battles. But still talking generally one approach I would like is to have losing a battle not cause a game over. Just cause a different outcome than winning. Let's say you fought the big bad and lost. Now you missed out on some cool stuff perhaps and you wake up somewhere else in the story than the place you would have gone to if you had won.
Essentially game over is the place where you're taken out of the immersive game experience and realize that the game is a game. If you see the game over screen more than once in a short amount of time you (when I say you I mean I. Because you is just what I write) start gaming the game.
Tangentially related:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2048
Of course talking about mine own battles I don't... uh... make battles. But still talking generally one approach I would like is to have losing a battle not cause a game over. Just cause a different outcome than winning. Let's say you fought the big bad and lost. Now you missed out on some cool stuff perhaps and you wake up somewhere else in the story than the place you would have gone to if you had won.
Essentially game over is the place where you're taken out of the immersive game experience and realize that the game is a game. If you see the game over screen more than once in a short amount of time you (when I say you I mean I. Because you is just what I write) start gaming the game.
Tangentially related:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2048
No_Id
38
I think it would behoove for "us" rm developers would be to find a way to have retries or at least not to have the player go all the way back to the previous save point. This would make the player want to continue playing the game because, speaking from experience, when I have played a few of the forum games, as soon as I lose a battle after a lot of work I get discourage and quit. I think this is because rather then actually trying to play and enjoy the game I am just trying to get through it so I can gather my thoughts about it and compare it to my game and others.
The only question I have is, do you allow retries after every battler or only boss battles? I like the pokemon approach a lot but then again the player didn't die only his pets.
The only question I have is, do you allow retries after every battler or only boss battles? I like the pokemon approach a lot but then again the player didn't die only his pets.
I don't mind losing in professional games or otherwise. If you play a game and you lose, you can only expect so much pandering/babying. I mean, you fucking lost, dude. With that said, quick saves, retries, and the option to skip cutscenes are acceptable features to have depending on the game, but generally I don't like the idea of making things fundamentally easier.
Silviera
2891
Personally I'm not a fan of a retry system. Not penalizing the player for losing basically removes all tension from the combat. I need that sense of impending loss to keep me on my toes and at my best, and there's always that palpable sense of relief after fighting your way through a perilous dungeon to reach the next save point. I'm not necessarily saying that I need to see a game over screen (DQ takes away half of your gold when you die, for example), but the player should always be doing everything they possibly can to avoid dying. I've played a few games where death was completely meaningless (late entries in the Wild ARMs series and Bioshock to name a few), and for me it seriously detracted from the experience.
A lot of the frustration inherent in game overs is simply a case of bad design. Games should not have unskippable 10 minute cutscenes before bosses and save points should be strategically placed so that hours of progress are never lost. Games should not have cheap attacks in normal encounters that can end a game instantly (I'm looking at you SMT). There's probably a lot of other things I'm forgetting but the bottom line is that game over does not have to feel insanely frustrating or unfair.
I really like this approach and I try to do it whenever possible, but in an RPG that might have hundreds of battles it isn't really viable except during major events, and even just in that case it is really quite a lot of extra work. I am in favor of alternative approaches in some games though, such as DQ's method of stealing half of your gold or being sent to the beginning of a dungeon or some other manner of punishment that's not just a game over screen.
Don't make the mistake of thinking a retry system is a simple fix to remove all frustration from RPGs either. When people aren't scared of dying in every fight they're going to be saving a lot less often, and if they find themselves in a fight they cannot possibly win (maybe they were in poor shape when the fight began, were ill prepared for something, or just took on some vicious optional boss), they will be stuck in a perpetual cycle of death that is going to force a reload.
In summary, dying needs to suck. But not too much.
A lot of the frustration inherent in game overs is simply a case of bad design. Games should not have unskippable 10 minute cutscenes before bosses and save points should be strategically placed so that hours of progress are never lost. Games should not have cheap attacks in normal encounters that can end a game instantly (I'm looking at you SMT). There's probably a lot of other things I'm forgetting but the bottom line is that game over does not have to feel insanely frustrating or unfair.
But still talking generally one approach I would like is to have losing a battle not cause a game over. Just cause a different outcome than winning. Let's say you fought the big bad and lost. Now you missed out on some cool stuff perhaps and you wake up somewhere else in the story than the place you would have gone to if you had won.
I really like this approach and I try to do it whenever possible, but in an RPG that might have hundreds of battles it isn't really viable except during major events, and even just in that case it is really quite a lot of extra work. I am in favor of alternative approaches in some games though, such as DQ's method of stealing half of your gold or being sent to the beginning of a dungeon or some other manner of punishment that's not just a game over screen.
Don't make the mistake of thinking a retry system is a simple fix to remove all frustration from RPGs either. When people aren't scared of dying in every fight they're going to be saving a lot less often, and if they find themselves in a fight they cannot possibly win (maybe they were in poor shape when the fight began, were ill prepared for something, or just took on some vicious optional boss), they will be stuck in a perpetual cycle of death that is going to force a reload.
In summary, dying needs to suck. But not too much.
It sounds to me like people are stuck with the concept of "Game Overs? Y/N", and that's not quite what I had it mind when I made this thread.
How hard can it be, really, to reward good players (i.e. players that do not die) without stealing progress from less able ones (i.e, forcing a reload). You can certainly withhold the rewards of EXP, AP, money, and what have you upon losing a fight, or as some of you have mentioned, kick the player back to the entrance of the dungeon/whatever. What I'm hoping to inspire discussion on how such a system can be implemented properly, not to compare dick lengths about how many times you've beaten the NES Ninja Gaiden with no sub-weapons.
Now, consider a game where:
a) Dying triggers an array of retry options (such as immediate, menu then retry, etc), and
b) Each option carries a certain cost, such as surrendering EXP or drops (or both, etc.), and
c) Deaths are considerably more frequent than you'd normally expect, due to the penalties of dying being significantly less strict.
This is far from an ideal scenario (and that's half the point). Where would you go from here?
How hard can it be, really, to reward good players (i.e. players that do not die) without stealing progress from less able ones (i.e, forcing a reload). You can certainly withhold the rewards of EXP, AP, money, and what have you upon losing a fight, or as some of you have mentioned, kick the player back to the entrance of the dungeon/whatever. What I'm hoping to inspire discussion on how such a system can be implemented properly, not to compare dick lengths about how many times you've beaten the NES Ninja Gaiden with no sub-weapons.
Now, consider a game where:
a) Dying triggers an array of retry options (such as immediate, menu then retry, etc), and
b) Each option carries a certain cost, such as surrendering EXP or drops (or both, etc.), and
c) Deaths are considerably more frequent than you'd normally expect, due to the penalties of dying being significantly less strict.
This is far from an ideal scenario (and that's half the point). Where would you go from here?
post=133501
I miss when games dumped you back to World 1-1 if you died.
While you might be sarcastic, doesn't that create the same kind of tedium as rewatching a cutscene? You are using the same tactics over again and only changing them once you reach the point where you failed, and the more you fail the more you have to bear through the same shit over again. This makes me quite thankful that save files exist.
I think there should be a balance. You should allow game overs to be lieniant in the sense where little repetition is created, but you should still provide some sort of punishment so that the player will not only be motivated not to screw up in the first place, but feel some reward after completing a level/battling something.
I don't think you even need "game over" screen to accomplish this. As much as I don't like using it as an example, the Pokemon series does a pretty good job with this. For a start, the reason for losing a battle in that game is often due to having an under-classed party by comparison to your opponent, with having a flawed strategy being a secondary reason. Losses in this game, especially in Trainer battles, tend to take away a good chunk of your money, even though you get to keep exp, and having a good load of items is part of the key to success in this grind-heavy game. While it lets players keep experience, it still manages to keep the player discouraged from losing , especially since you often can't earn the money you lose back unless you clear the boss (assuming that most trainers you seen before the boss have been defeated, and since you can't really progress without beating an individual gym leader, your opportunity to battle other trainers, and therefore gain money and the mose exp, dwindles).
So I don't believe this situation has to be so black and white. Kick the player's ass for failure, but don't hit his crotch.
Shinan
4314
post=133503
It sounds to me like people are stuck with the concept of "Game Overs? Y/N", and that's not quite what I had it mind when I made this thread.
How hard can it be, really, to reward good players (i.e. players that do not die) without stealing progress from less able ones (i.e, forcing a reload). You can certainly withhold the rewards of EXP, AP, money, and what have you upon losing a fight, or as some of you have mentioned, kick the player back to the entrance of the dungeon/whatever.
The problem with not awarding XP to players who have a hard time is that it's a slippery slope. If you don't get XP you don't get better. If you don't get better the game gets harder. If the game gets harder it gets more frustrating.
What I don't like, even about retry options and XP penalties is the "breakage of immersion". The second you get a menu saying "YOU SUCKED do you want to have an easier time PUSSY?" I'm thrown out of the game and into... whatever else there is. The game is less about an experience (something that RPGs are all about, playing and experiencing a story and a world) and suddenly it's about passing an obstacle or, as I said before, "gaming the game".
Some of these things can be played around with "behind the scenes". In an options menu you could just check the "hardcore option" and have those YOU ARE A PUSSY segments when you die. But you could also make it unobtrusive to the casual player. Perhaps auto-adjust the difficult after one death (one death is no death, two deaths are too many) and then after beating that one place adjust it back to what it was before. Essentially always making the "retry option" a little bit easier without hammering it in. (perhaps even go so far as to look into player performance to see just how much easier the game needs to get... though that needs insane amounts of testing and is not recommended for us... amateurs) And then if you ticked the "hardcore" box this just doesn't apply at all.
Actually I'm completely against penalizing the player unless the player WANTS to be penalized. There could always be that option menu where you have stuff like "no saving" or "no XP for you sucker". The regular player should always get the full experience without having to feel left out just because he isn't all that good. These are games. And they are supposed to be enjoyable. Preferably enjoyable by as many people as possible.
And the above is only for games you want to have enjoyable for as many people as possible. I'm not counting niche markets and awesome games that are hard that cater to a certain audience. This all is generally speaking.
Neophyte
155
Uhhh, I don't know. I don't think difficulty is the culprit here. Because there are many difficult games that are still very casual to play.
For example, Spelunky.
That game shows no remorse. The average player probably dies over 500 times in that game. But it also has that "one more try" feeling. And I think that feeling is the real key with the whole dying thing. I don't think people turn the game off because of its difficulty. I think they turn it off because of all the repetitive things that happen between them. The game over screen popping up, the load times (biggest issue in professional games), walking back to the location of death, etc. It's harder to get that "just one more try" feeling when you have to go through bullshit screens and loading times that prolong your progress for absolutely no reason. They don't add difficulty, you're just staring at a screen that you've been to a million times and has no purpose whatsoever.
I guess what I'm saying is when somebody plays a game and they give up, difficulty shouldn't exactly be the first thing you look at. I don't know how you could do a proper system, since there really isn't one? Nobody really knows what they're talking about when discussing this subject. It's just whatever they prefer. *shrugs*
edit: it's kind of weird that if you ever play multiplayer games like Halo or Call of Duty, you almost always get that one more try feeling. I know why that is, but it just seems odd. There seems to be this barrier between multiplayer games and single player.
For example, Spelunky.
That game shows no remorse. The average player probably dies over 500 times in that game. But it also has that "one more try" feeling. And I think that feeling is the real key with the whole dying thing. I don't think people turn the game off because of its difficulty. I think they turn it off because of all the repetitive things that happen between them. The game over screen popping up, the load times (biggest issue in professional games), walking back to the location of death, etc. It's harder to get that "just one more try" feeling when you have to go through bullshit screens and loading times that prolong your progress for absolutely no reason. They don't add difficulty, you're just staring at a screen that you've been to a million times and has no purpose whatsoever.
I guess what I'm saying is when somebody plays a game and they give up, difficulty shouldn't exactly be the first thing you look at. I don't know how you could do a proper system, since there really isn't one? Nobody really knows what they're talking about when discussing this subject. It's just whatever they prefer. *shrugs*
edit: it's kind of weird that if you ever play multiplayer games like Halo or Call of Duty, you almost always get that one more try feeling. I know why that is, but it just seems odd. There seems to be this barrier between multiplayer games and single player.
Gongo
36
I don't think people should be awarded for losing, If you die then you die, suck it up and try again.
Blaming the creators is not going to help, if you keep dieing then your doing something wrong, people need to stop blaming other people and just try harder.
Anyway what I would love to see is when a person loses the story continues and they don't get a second chance at that battle, so the ending will differ depending on how well the player went. (did that make any sense?)
Blaming the creators is not going to help, if you keep dieing then your doing something wrong, people need to stop blaming other people and just try harder.
Anyway what I would love to see is when a person loses the story continues and they don't get a second chance at that battle, so the ending will differ depending on how well the player went. (did that make any sense?)
post=133483
New plan is to still have this with FF13's mid-battle retry menu for maximum accessibility. No reason why not to, it's better for everyone and if you really want to go back to the loading screen after a defeat you can just select "Load Game". Everybody wins! :D
This is basically what I'm doing in Diablocide X. "Escape" is changed to "Retry" (with a confirmation dialog, of course). Losing will actually still be GAME OVERNESSOSITY, but you can 1) save anywhere and 2) always see upcoming fights.
EDIT: Time for a more general response!
I think that it's fine for some games to be purposefully evil/strict with Game Overs. Spelunky/roguelikes are based on gameovernessosity. However, I believe that GOs don't need to be strict in most games. A slap on the wrist, yes - like Feld said, you DID lose. However, I don't think punching the player back have an hour is the way to go. "Hey, thanks for playing and taking some risks - that's a good chunk of making exploration-based RPGs fun, after all - so I'm going to reward you with THERE GOES EVERYTHING YOU DID."
So you guess an enemy's attack pattern wrong and die. That enemy with the stick was a monk, not a mage.
Now what? Sounds like you guys want to have dying send you to the start of the dungeon/segment/game, instead of having :
a) dying penalized in some way, such as gold loss, but having the option to retry (and possibly make up for it) or cut your losses and escape.
b) allowing the player to save anywhere, that way they are only penalized if they make an honest mistake (like forgetting to save for a floor or two).
c) making battles so easy you never have to worry about dying.
I know you guys aren't that thick so as to think re-doing those last five floors since the last save is a good thing. Neophyte brought an excellent point up in the fact that you are going to get sick of doing that floor over and over and over just because someone thought that "THE WEAK NEED TO BE PUNISHED".
What do you get out of having "go load your save" Game Overs other than a fake sense of "I did that part of the game 50 times I feel so hardcore"?
Now what? Sounds like you guys want to have dying send you to the start of the dungeon/segment/game, instead of having :
a) dying penalized in some way, such as gold loss, but having the option to retry (and possibly make up for it) or cut your losses and escape.
b) allowing the player to save anywhere, that way they are only penalized if they make an honest mistake (like forgetting to save for a floor or two).
c) making battles so easy you never have to worry about dying.
I know you guys aren't that thick so as to think re-doing those last five floors since the last save is a good thing. Neophyte brought an excellent point up in the fact that you are going to get sick of doing that floor over and over and over just because someone thought that "THE WEAK NEED TO BE PUNISHED".
What do you get out of having "go load your save" Game Overs other than a fake sense of "I did that part of the game 50 times I feel so hardcore"?
This is a good point. I never really gave it much thought because of the whole "WELP DONT DIE THEN" but really... playing FF13 last night and died, after like 8 battles. GREAT. Made me turn off the damn thing, such a waste of time. Because I have -so much- time to waste. /pshh.
Neophyte
155
post=133512Wait a minute. This doesn't make sense. People by default try their hardest to beat a game. You're going under the assumption that the developer has done no wrong in creating the game, when in fact, they are the ones who make the most mistakes.
Blaming the creators is not going to help, if you keep dieing then your doing something wrong, people need to stop blaming other people and just try harder.
What if the developer didn't mention that one core mechanic or strategy that is necessary to win the battle? What if you accidentally skipped a line of important dialogue and have no option to go back and reread what was just said? The people playing your game have every right to complain about these things. It's one thing to make things difficult, but it's a whole different ball game when a developer hasn't used the proper steps in getting you prepared for the difficult section.
I can see the other side of the discussion, though. Some people like to be punished for their mistakes. That's why Demons Souls and older Castlevania games are very popular to a certain crowd. That's why people turned off vita chambers in BioShock 2. And that's why I said there isn't really a proper system for this.
You really should make it so you can save anywhere, though. That's more for convenience than difficulty. If something unexpected pops up in real life, I would like to have the option of closing the game immediately without losing progress, thank you very much.
post=133519
You really should make it so you can save anywhere, though. That's more for convenience than difficulty. If something unexpected pops up in real life, I would like to have the option of closing the game immediately without losing progress, thank you very much.
Before somebody says "grandmothers only die twice," some of us have these things called "friends" and we like to do things with them. They are generally of a higher priority than a videogame. Also, this is why I usually just play games on my DS nowadays... just close it, and it's paused!
Yeaster
6164
We see RPGs become easier and easier just to prevent you from having to reload your save file
I've been doing this, for better or worse. Complete Chaos is without a doubt my easiest game yet, whereas Onyx is definitely my hardest game (because I didn't really know what I was doing when I made it). Anything that I thought would give anyone playing Complete Chaos too much trouble, I took out. I still wanted to make the game reasonably challenging at parts, but I didn't want to punish the players. The fact that I got several emails/facebook messages from people who've beaten the game after a month of release made me happy, for I know it was a good while before I got any emails about Onyx 2, heh.
But yeah, I tried to minimize the annoyance-factor of the GOs by having the players save wherever they want, or loading the areas with save points like I did with MMZ.
Tonfa
150
This is an excellent point of discussion but the reason it keeps coming up is there is no catchall solution.
Save anywhere runs into the problem of making resource management and having to think about an encounter's threat value/using the escape command a complete nonissue.
Quicksaves you can use anywhere but get destroyed when you load the game would solve the issue in an excellent fashion, but are these even possible to do in RM*?
Save anywhere runs into the problem of making resource management and having to think about an encounter's threat value/using the escape command a complete nonissue.
Quicksaves you can use anywhere but get destroyed when you load the game would solve the issue in an excellent fashion, but are these even possible to do in RM*?
