Failure as a positive game mechanism?

[Seboss]

Well, if I remember correctly, the way Daggerfall deals with felony, reputation, lycanthropism etc is all right.

 

[DraQ]

Well, if I remember correctly, the way Daggerfall deals with felony, reputation, lycanthropism etc is all right.

Yeah. Now they should add some consequences worth looking to.

Morrowind also had some fail-continue scenarios. One even made it to Oblibians (TG's opening quest), but this had probably less to do with C&C, more with not allowing player to screw completely in the few places where the very concept of failure couldn't be eradicated. All hail oblibians.

 

[aries202]

As I understand it, In Mass Effect, you can actually let some (bad) guys live in you so choose; you can do the same in Dragon Age: Origins. Especially if you play the Dalish elves origins.

 

[DraQ]

As I understand it, In Mass Effect, you can actually let some (bad) guys live in you so choose; you can do the same in Dragon Age: Origins. Especially if you play the Dalish elves origins.

And where is failure in that? I haven't played Ass Effect.

 

[nekkerbee]

My inaugural post!

I have a couple of game ideas rattling around my brain, and from a design perspective the issue of mission failure is one I’ve been chewing on. In many ways it’s an offshoot of C&C; you’re not making an active choice to fail (although that would be interesting to implement), but there are definite consequences of failing.

The standard model is the binary mission success = benefit/progress, failure = stagnation or punishment. To make failure an acceptable outcome the model should be changed to something like success = benefit A, failure = benefit B, or perhaps success = benefit A/punishment B, failure = benefit C/punishment D.

For example, your Town Guard pc is ordered to free a hostage from a madman. Success brings you praise and future assistance from the hostage and her family and a monetary reward, failure (where the madman kills the hostage) means no money and scorn from the hostage’s family, but you gain skill points in Psychology to better handle similar situations in the future.

To keep players on their toes, not all outcomes would be like this. For some it is the standard binary good/bad outcomes; for other missions, success might bring the negative effects (“That dastardly goatfucker was actually Prince Rupert’s son and now I’m being put on the graveyard shift?!?”) and failure a benefit (“I’ve failed to catch that livestock-buggering miscreant, but Prince Rupert gave me a small bag of silver for my efforts!”). Perhaps the graveyard shift will open a mission or two that wouldn’t be available otherwise…

Also, it would be better if missions could have partial successes in addition to the regular success/failure.

I don’t expect big official titles to do this; they’re interested in sales, and most casual players prefer the formulaic approach with which they’re familiar. But indie developers shouldn’t be thinking so much about striking it rich (because they won’t), but about making the games they enjoy, or the games they think should be made.

* * *

Yossarian mentioned ITS. What is this?

 

[Redlands]

My inaugural post!

* * *

Yossarian mentioned ITS. What is this?

I think I'm supposed to make fun of you in some erudite, clever manner. But I don't have the time, so I'll leave it up to others. Should at least call you a faggot or something, I forget.

ITS is Iron Tower Studios:

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/

They're either developing the next great RPG, or pulling an incredibly elaborate multi-person mega-troll on us that rivals Frank W. Abagnale in its balls-out audacity.

I'm not sure which I'd prefer.

 

[nekkerbee]

Thanks. In retrospect it really was pretty fucking obvious.

 

[DraQ]

Thanks. In retrospect it really was pretty fucking obvious.

I'm afraid this is the case.

 

[Thrasher]

Don't worry, psuedo-deep posing of the obvious is de rigueur here.

 

[Forest Dweller]

If I recall correctly, in order to finish Deus Ex, you had to complete one task but fail in two others?

No, that was three different endings that you can choose from.

 

[Haba]

One of my favorite rpg's, Aleshar had quite brutal combat system. If you got wounded in the wilderness, you'd often have to make a long arduous trip to a town to find a healer to set your broken bones. In Aleshar's setting (desolate icy wastes with very few people) this didn't feel like a chore but rather added to the atmosphere.

I'd love to see a game where you actually wear your old battle wounds like a badge of honor instead of just reloading after the combat. This naturally takes a bit of balancing.

 

[Thrasher]

I have to tell you that bad luck instant dealth by poison in the Goldbox PoR is only funny because I save frequently, otherwise, I wouldn't put up with it.

 

[John Yossarian]

Also, it would be better if missions could have partial successes in addition to the regular success/failure.

THIS

Yossarian mentioned ITS. What is this?

Somewhat related to this thread: http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/in ... opic=428.0


Edit: Sorry for all the linkage, but I enjoy this topic, and this one is very much related : http://rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=13744

 

[Kaucukovnik]

Thanks for the link to the older thread, very interesting reading indeed.

In both this thread and the linked one, a much discussed topic is the player's possibility and need to reload. But you cannot remove save/load entirely as long as there is a possibility of fatal failure, death, game over. And I cannot think of a playable RPG in which such a fatal failure wasn't possible.

It seems there is a very fine balance between entertainment and challenge. By presenting every non-fatal outcome of player's action as a good way to continue removes a great deal of the challenge, but making a success the only rewarding outcome lessens entertainment in favor of effectivity of gameplay.

On the other hand, the above paragraph is true only in terms of the gameplay we are used to. More or less every game comes with one (or several - if its story branches somehow) "right" ways to go through, with some margin for error and failure. But what we are discussing now is a hypothetical game in which the right way to get through would be the way the player wanted. Not because the game expects him to do so, but because he would like things to happen in that way.
There were a few games that did this, but only occasionally - as some kind of bonus, not by design.

For instance, in my opinion many (if not most) players of BG or BG2 who are classified by the game as "lawful good" are in fact "lawful evil" - doing good deeds, because they expect the game to reward them for it, they expect it to be an optimal way to play.

In our hypothetical game, the right way to play would be the one the player chooses, no matter how often he needs to reload.
You want to be a tough guy? Then some diplomatic failure here and there can be good - now you can kick their butts! Want to play a cheap ass? Then you won't mind a lost battle, as long as you manage to live through it - but you may want to reload when you fail to steal some money from a rich merchant. Or you can cope with anything your actions result in, reloading only in a case of a fatal failure.

Plot twists could be also achieved like this. Only the failure to accomplish a quest could reveal its true nature, in the end making you happy that you failed. Through the death of an ally you could get even stronger ally, who wants to avenge his/her dead friend (remember, you are not responsible for his death, just failed to prevent it).

 

[SCO]

I guess things could be implemented like in good programming.

In good programming there is normally some ideal path - the happy path. After doing the happy path, you, writer, might want to prune some parts of it - normally by killing or pissing off people. Partial failure. Then you might want to create a branching point at the end or middle (like bloodlines), and implement the happy path for it, and the partial failure modes afterward.

If you're feeling really hard core you might want to give the opportunity to jump from one path to the other for a while (like in avernum).

Gosh, i wish i could make a Sabbath mod for bloodlines.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

Some more thoughts.

In the case a failure to accomplish something is directly offered by the game (through dialogue, journal entry...), it is a choice that the game gives to the player, and the player only chooses between options. The game thinks for the player giving him options with more or less predictable consequences.

On the other hand, if most options were not directly told to the player, many possibilities would be only reachable through the player actively thinking out his options. And often he could encounter new options through failure in his originally intended approach.

This would, of course, require simple (-> less prone to bugs) yet effective system to enable the developers to implement all game content in a dynamic way.


The reason why I tend to powergaming in many games is, that the roleplaying part feels artificial, it is very transparent, you can clearly see all the triggers behind quests. It's like a gamebook: "If you want to go left, turn to 132, if you want to go right, turn to 221."
And whenever a game catches me with the story and characters, I tend to hurry the gameplay to see the characters and story develop. So my point is melding these two parts together. To have a story to be really played, not a mindless game with story interludes.


And one more thing. This approach is only valid if you intend to make a game that is to be experienced, to be "lived" by the player. If the main goal is challenging combat or a certain linear story, there are better mechanisms out there.

 

[kris]

I don't think the current problem for having ideas like this this implemented is players not accepting it.
No, the real problem is that these ideas will lead to a lot of content that players may never see. A current (horrible) trend in RPGs now is to make sure players miss no content. Different content for different outcomes would mean more work that is only seen by the player in multiple playthroughs.

Otherwise I could easily come up with a lot of ideas.
- Fail to save a kidnapped? Get a mission for revenge. Or have other adventurers sent to have revenge on you!
- Not completing fed-ex quest in time for shop owner. Have him replaced by a man for the mob boss he owned money from. With different items and inflated prices.
- etc.

 

[Serpentine Cougar]

Reminds me of a GameSetWatch article that talked about how Mount & Blade dealt with saving and failure.

In Mount&Blade, failure is common. If the player character falls in battle, entire armies can be lost, and towns can be razed by bandits. Failing to complete a quest can lower the PC's reputation or alienate team members, and characters remember and comment on failures in battle. Death, however, never occurs. When the PC's entire army is defeated, the PC is captured, and must escape or bribe her captors to be set free.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

I thought about trying bad experience points on PnP games. You get them by failing, and eventually have to buy shit stuff with them, for example personality traits like lazy, depressed and so on, maybe at random. If at random there could also be a small chance you learned something from all your failures, and your BadEXP transforms in to real exp. What do you think?

EDIT : Or maybe you pick the negative trait, whatever it be, and get experience reward attached to it, so that some more severe negatraits also give more experience.

 

[J1M]

I thought about trying bad experience points on PnP games. You get them by failing, and eventually have to buy shit stuff with them, for example personality traits like lazy, depressed and so on, maybe at random. If at random there could also be a small chance you learned something from all your failures, and your BadEXP transforms in to real exp. What do you think?

EDIT : Or maybe you pick the negative trait, whatever it be, and get experience reward attached to it, so that some more severe negatraits also give more experience.

That would encourage reloading a game even more. The point of this thread is how to encourage players to not reload a game when they fail at a mission and continue playing with the consequences.

One thing that hasn't been discussed here is the illogical extreme this style of design can lead to and how the jump to that extreme can occur. I am referring to the vita chambers in Bioshock. If you fail in that game you get a free respawn with no consequences.

How does one implement partial failure without it degrading into the consequences being trivial and without giving the player a large incentive to reload?

 

[John Yossarian]

How does one implement partial failure without it degrading into the consequences being trivial and without giving the player a large incentive to reload?

Well, not all reloads are bad. The bad reloads are the ones that force the player through repetive, mindless gameplay. If you reload to try the failed challenge in a different and entertaining way, that´s fine IMO. In this case you´re not reloading because the game will stop being fun after failing, but because you enjoy the challenge itself. The irony is that games that offer multiple, interesting ways to overcome challenges are also the ones most likely to offer entertaining consequences to failures.

As to your question, I think shifting the focus from "your achievements" to "your footprint in the gameworld" would go a long way in achieving that. Couldn´t there be circumstances where leaving an opponent impressed by your PC´s resolve and bravery, and honored to have defeated you more satisfying than defeating him?
This is linked to the more general problem of making the gameworld more reactive, which IMO is very setting-specific, and very difficult to tackle in general. But is fun to think about anyway.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

It isn't a problem that players might want to reload, or cheat, or edit savegames, that's entirely their own business. Implement an ironman mode, reloading problem solved for everybody but pussies.

 

[Khor1255]

Things like failure as a positive game mechanic are the bread and butter of non linear gameplay. This is a great topic and the OP is a credit to game developers everywhere.

Good stuff man.

 

[soggie]

Thanks OP for this thread. It inspired me to include different levels of success and different levels of failure into my quest designs.

 

[CarnivalBizarre]

Failure should only be if you die, and reload is the only way.

Otherwise failure is just an option, another way forward, another branch. If you fail your persuade check to convice the baker to make that erotic cake that will get your into the duchess pants then perhaps other "cracks" can open, or you just will have to bribe her guards to get her alone costing additional cash.

And yeah Haba, battle scars are way cool and should all be recorded on the character. Any fight that doesn't kill you should give you massive intimidation factor on your enemies later on, they might have heard of you and when they see your scars they know death has come!

For this timelines must be longer to facilitate natural healing, but timelines should be alot longer anyway since traning should be the primary way of increasing skills and attributes and that takes time and money.