Vapourware What is "degenerate" gameplay afterall?

[vivec]

I keep hearing this term from a lot of people and I have no clue what THEY mean. For me, "degenerate" gameplay is about repetitiveness i.e. the game poses encounters which are more of the same and you are forced to use the same tactics over and over. Sometimes, it can be also about using the same tactics/builds over and over because those tactics are so "cheesy" that they always work.

In either case, I see the failure on the part of the encounter design. If the encounters in a game are always of mostly similar nature so that they do not encourage full use of the arsenal at your repertoire but rather a cynical "one trumps all" tactics then the game can be seen as degenerate. Furthermore, my intuition tells me that if the designer creates a "combat" oriented game filling the "combat area" also known as the dungeon with a lot of encounters, he will always end up creating degeneracy, unless he presents a meaningful approach to avoid combat as well. I personally prefer "hand-crafted" set-ups where the difficulty is really high and where each separate encounter feels distinct and forces the player to think and adapt. This design I would call "non-degenerate".

Thoughts on the matter?

 

[Ivan]

while I enjoyed it when it was released, it spawned the cover based TPS devolution

 

[Mustawd]

 

[Sigourn]

When you fight ten different distinct enemies, and you use the same tactic to beat them all (assuming by "tactic" we don't understand "find the enemy's weaknesses and explot it"), there's something wrong with the game. It is a forgiveable offense if you are meant to be curbstomping the enemies. But when you are supposed to be more or less equal in strength, and the same tactic applies to every enemy, something is wrong.

In regards to the exception I made, I should make another exception.

1. This is acceptable: each enemy has a distinctively unique way to kill them. Some may require you to dodge and exploit the one time they are open, other may require you to hit them hard.
   
2. This is not acceptable: enemies have palette swapped weaknesses. Most blatant example is Pokémon. Use the elemental weakness, and kill the 'mon.

I think this is sort of unavoidable in games where you can simply get stronger, but there's no excuse in a game where you don't really "level up".

 

[Valky]

I keep hearing this terms from a lot of people and I have no clue what THEY mean. For me, "degenerate" gameplay is about repetitiveness i.e. the game poses encounters which are more of the same and you are forced to use the same tactics over and over. Sometimes, it can be also about using the same tactics/builds over and over because those tactics are so "cheesy" that they always work.

In either case, I see the failure on the part of the encounter design. If the encounters in a game are always of mostly similar nature so that they do not encourage full use of the arsenal at your repertoire but rather a cynical "one trumps all" tactics then the game can be seen as degenerate. Furthermore, my intuition tells me that if the designer creates a "combat" oriented game filling the "combat area" also known as the dungeon with a lot of encounters, he will always end up creating degeneracy, unless he presents a meaningful approach to avoid combat as well. I personally prefer "hand-crafted" set-ups where the difficulty is really high and where each separate encounter feels distinct and forces the player to think and adapt. This design I would call "non-degenerate".

Thoughts on the matter?

Real time with pause is degenerate.

 

[Grauken]

Basically the game designer overlooked something you can exploit in a way not intended, but still technically correct gameplay (the best kind of being correct)

 

[naossano]

What is decline ?

 

[Baron Dupek]

In theory - fix obsolete gameplay to make game more enjoyable
In practice - it cause degradation of your brian because it's often combined with degenerate game design, which order devs to make games for least smart population of dead brains cashuals that buy $59.99 digital products by accident and can't be arsed to read stuff and learn shit.

 

[KILLER BEAR]

It's just an alternative term for bad gameplay.
degenerate --> not good

I 've mostly seen it used in the context of "systems that encourage degenerate gameplay", which is a way to say that a certain system forces or encourages the player to play in a modus that results in boring/tedious/unfun gameplay. Like when discussing the implementation of learn by use systems a common criticism is that they encourage grinding etc.

 

[Keye_]

But first we must ask ourselves: What is gameplay?

 

[naossano]

I think people have different words for different situations.

Imo, the problem is normalization. Or if the term isn't good, the tendency to have everything in every media to join some norms and formulas to secure incomes.

It could be copy-pasting the project that made the most income, removing quirks to attract the general audience, or people thinking that there is only one way to be good. (and executive issues)

Problem is that many of the game that we have the fondest memory are generally one of a kind. A game that dared to have a different gameplay, dared to have some quirks that other hadn't, and we keep playing those because there is no others like them. At some point, we had much more variety in gaming, games that played a very different ways. Now the AAA are only releasing clones of the same game (with different skin) and while indie are more varied, there are still tryingto codify the genre they are working on to secure their playerbase. Sometimes the reasons can be very understandable. But for many players, we are specifically looking for something different, a concept and some quirks not found in other games. And the number of norms will keep increasing and the previous ones aren't erased. It doesn't just applies to videosgames.

 

[mondblut]

It's when the designer expects you to "have fun" in a very specific and constricted way he has envisioned, but fails to sufficiently restrict and railroad you, and you manage to do something he didn't want you to do and worst of it all, enjoy it.

Example: you are told "hurry and save the puppy, before the wolves eat him", you agree, go grind on dragons for 5 game years, then pick up the puppy and return it to the grateful owner. Every time you do that, Sawyer weeps and cuts his hands.

I.e. "degenerate gameplay" = best gameplay. And more often than not, THE gameplay.

 

[vivec]

It's when the designer expects you to "have fun" in a very specific and constricted way he has envisioned, but fails to sufficiently restrict and railroad you, and you manage to do something he didn't want you to do and worst of it all, enjoy it.

Example: you are told "hurry and save the puppy, before the wolves eat him", you agree, go grind on dragons for 5 game years, then pick up the puppy and return it to the grateful owner. Every time you do that, Sawyer weeps and cuts his hands.

I.e. "degenerate gameplay" = best gameplay. And more often than not, THE gameplay.

Not sure if I agree. Oh, I am certain playing the way the designer did not intend may cause him consternation and JS is definitely a victim of this malady. But, I have more often seen this particular degeneration refer to the idea of repetitive behavior. I said "not sure that I agree" because i see your point in some sense, where *how* I play should be totally up to me and the more the free-form the game constraints the better. It is my gameplay and no one has any right to criticize me of "degenerate" gameplay.

 

[DraQ]

I would say that degenerate gameplay refers to a way gameplay can be "short circuited" to become much less complex, interesting or much less sensible than could be inferred from overall complexity and design of the game in question, thus making most of it spurious and reducing gameplay depth.

Basically the game designer overlooked something you can exploit in a way not intended, but still technically correct gameplay (the best kind of being correct)

Not all unintended gameplay is degenerate - things that don't reduce gameplay to mindless application of the same cheesy tricks, nor are plain fucking nonsensical are not degenerate gameplay. If anything they are testament to game's greatness and robustness by showing how its systems or other pieces of design actually transcend authorial intent by working in a sensible manner and providing adequate gameplay depth even though the game went clearly off the rails and is nowhere near the situations expected by the authors.

Degenerate gameplay is when the game breaks in such fashion that it diminishes its original gameplay or other design elements in some way instead of expanding it.

Unintended or at least unspecified gameplay that expands the original is called "emergent".

I keep hearing this terms from a lot of people and I have no clue what THEY mean. For me, "degenerate" gameplay is about repetitiveness i.e. the game poses encounters which are more of the same and you are forced to use the same tactics over and over. Sometimes, it can be also about using the same tactics/builds over and over because those tactics are so "cheesy" that they always work.

Yes, mostly.

In either case, I see the failure on the part of the encounter design. If the encounters in a game are always of mostly similar nature so that they do not encourage full use of the arsenal at your repertoire but rather a cynical "one trumps all" tactics then the game can be seen as degenerate. Furthermore, my intuition tells me that if the designer creates a "combat" oriented game filling the "combat area" also known as the dungeon with a lot of encounters, he will always end up creating degeneracy, unless he presents a meaningful approach to avoid combat as well. I personally prefer "hand-crafted" set-ups where the difficulty is really high and where each separate encounter feels distinct and forces the player to think and adapt. This design I would call "non-degenerate".

Not exactly. If the systems are prone to degeneracy, then even making the encounters as diverse as possible won't help as all those diverse encounters will still reduce to the same brand of cheese.
OTOH a game with deep enough mechanics may keep things diverse and interesting even if its effectively devoid of encounter design - take traditional games like Chess or Go - each "encounter" is set up in the exact same way and good openings are pretty much codified, yet it fails to make those games repetitive. In an SP game against an AI it's trickier (good AI obviously helps), but deep mechanics ought to provide large enough space to allow even just variations caused by random factors to keep surprising you and force you to learn how to play the game instead of just going through the motions.

Then there is the issue of some sorts of degeneracy not being related to anything that could be meaningfully called encounter design - for example the degenerate gameplay of treating pretty much every NPC, hostile or otherwise, as an XP bag in XP based systems.

 

[DraQ]

One more thing:

I would say that, as tempting as associating it with individual qualities of the degenerates players revelling in it might be, "degenerate gameplay" seems mostly based on mathematical meaning of the word "degenerate" rather than any moral one:

(mathematics) A degenerate case is a limiting case in which a class of object changes its nature so as to belong to another, usually simpler, class.

 

[Valky]

RTwP is mathematical degeneracy as well because it belongs to low class plebeians.

 

[imweasel]

 

[Leechmonger]

When a specific tactic is so effective that it removes all challenge and thinking from a game. It's sometimes used when a game provides mechanics that would otherwise result in a challenging and intellectually stimulating experience. In these cases the degenerate tactic reduces a complex system into a simple repeatable action. Think Disintegrate in Arcanum or rest spam in Pillars of Eternity,

Spoiler

if either of these games had good combat to begin with.

 

[AMG]

Like any buzzword, there are as many meanings as its users.
But it seems to be mostly used in relation to behaviour that breaks or tivializes parts of the game, because the designer was shit/lazy and didn't properly proof it. It usually involves some repetitive or tedious activities, hence degenerate, because it's not fun.
For example reloading failed skillchecks, grinding, exploiting AI, hauling items between dungeon levels in roguelikes, resting/pre-buffing in IE games or everything in Bethesda's games.

 

[Sentinel]

I keep hearing this terms from a lot of people and I have no clue what THEY mean. For me, "degenerate" gameplay is about repetitiveness i.e. the game poses encounters which are more of the same and you are forced to use the same tactics over and over. Sometimes, it can be also about using the same tactics/builds over and over because those tactics are so "cheesy" that they always work.

In either case, I see the failure on the part of the encounter design. If the encounters in a game are always of mostly similar nature so that they do not encourage full use of the arsenal at your repertoire but rather a cynical "one trumps all" tactics then the game can be seen as degenerate. Furthermore, my intuition tells me that if the designer creates a "combat" oriented game filling the "combat area" also known as the dungeon with a lot of encounters, he will always end up creating degeneracy, unless he presents a meaningful approach to avoid combat as well. I personally prefer "hand-crafted" set-ups where the difficulty is really high and where each separate encounter feels distinct and forces the player to think and adapt. This design I would call "non-degenerate".

Thoughts on the matter?

Real time with pause is degenerate.

turn based is degenerate

 

[Mustawd]

I keep hearing this terms from a lot of people and I have no clue what THEY mean. For me, "degenerate" gameplay is about repetitiveness i.e. the game poses encounters which are more of the same and you are forced to use the same tactics over and over. Sometimes, it can be also about using the same tactics/builds over and over because those tactics are so "cheesy" that they always work.

In either case, I see the failure on the part of the encounter design. If the encounters in a game are always of mostly similar nature so that they do not encourage full use of the arsenal at your repertoire but rather a cynical "one trumps all" tactics then the game can be seen as degenerate. Furthermore, my intuition tells me that if the designer creates a "combat" oriented game filling the "combat area" also known as the dungeon with a lot of encounters, he will always end up creating degeneracy, unless he presents a meaningful approach to avoid combat as well. I personally prefer "hand-crafted" set-ups where the difficulty is really high and where each separate encounter feels distinct and forces the player to think and adapt. This design I would call "non-degenerate".

Thoughts on the matter?

Real time with pause is degenerate.

turn based is degenerate

Nice try, edgelord.

 

[Excidium II]

Gameplay that encourages anti-fun routines

 

[Sentinel]

I keep hearing this terms from a lot of people and I have no clue what THEY mean. For me, "degenerate" gameplay is about repetitiveness i.e. the game poses encounters which are more of the same and you are forced to use the same tactics over and over. Sometimes, it can be also about using the same tactics/builds over and over because those tactics are so "cheesy" that they always work.

In either case, I see the failure on the part of the encounter design. If the encounters in a game are always of mostly similar nature so that they do not encourage full use of the arsenal at your repertoire but rather a cynical "one trumps all" tactics then the game can be seen as degenerate. Furthermore, my intuition tells me that if the designer creates a "combat" oriented game filling the "combat area" also known as the dungeon with a lot of encounters, he will always end up creating degeneracy, unless he presents a meaningful approach to avoid combat as well. I personally prefer "hand-crafted" set-ups where the difficulty is really high and where each separate encounter feels distinct and forces the player to think and adapt. This design I would call "non-degenerate".

Thoughts on the matter?

Real time with pause is degenerate.

turn based is degenerate

Nice try, edgelord.

sure is fun watching AI move around the battlefield for a full minute

 

[Mustawd]

Lol, wow.

It's like looking into the future of the Codex.

 

[Sentinel]

Lol, wow.

It's like looking into the future of the Codex.

only game that ever had good turn based combat was toee
deal w it cunt