[UseSkill XY] In Dialog lines - yes/no ?

[JaySn]

No, it makes cheating a viable option, if one wants to pursue such a course of action. What you're suggesting is removing that choice, or at least making it difficult.

Sometimes I really want to successfully plant C4 on someone, stats be damned, and reloading is the way to do it. Or I want to figure out how to get through a terror mission with a perfect score . . .

Fuck anti-cheating measures.

 

[DraQ]

No, it makes cheating a viable option, if one wants to pursue such a course of action. What you're suggesting is removing that choice, or at least making it difficult.

Sometimes I really want to successfully plant C4 on someone, stats be damned, and reloading is the way to do it. Or I want to figure out how to get through a terror mission with a perfect score . . .

Fuck anti-cheating measures.

Out the fuck you should get.

 

[Lexx]

Combat, for example, has a lot of randomness, yet it tends to not be reloaded unless some major failure occurs. Certainly no sane person will reload combat encounters just because they didn't play out perfectly and their character happened to miss some enemy mook 3/4 into the battle.

I don't see this equal. Combat is what you have all around you most of the time-- important skill checks in dialogues and such not. Plus, if you take damage in combat, you most likely can heal yourself from that pretty easy, while a failed dialogue check is a failed dialogue check that can't be redone (in most or a lot cases).

 

[Shemar]

There are two different schools of thought here. One says that reloading after a skill check is cheating and should be penalized, the other says reloading is a perfectly legitimate way of experimenting and experiencing different outcomes without having to replay the whole fucking game. I firmly stand on the latter. If you think reloading is cheating don't fucking do it. If I feel like reloading 20 times just to see what would happen if I succeed in a nearly impossible check, that's my business. In most cases it is not worth the trouble, but it should always be up to the player and nobody else to make the call of how much metagaming is worth the effort.

 

[shihonage]

Stopping reloading is easy - just remove random element from dialogue skill checks, or pre-roll them at the start of the game.

Also, don't penalize player for failing the skill checks, simply "push him out", prevent him from succeeding in that path.

No, it makes cheating a viable option, if one wants to pursue such a course of action. What you're suggesting is removing that choice, or at least making it difficult.

Sometimes I really want to successfully plant C4 on someone, stats be damned, and reloading is the way to do it. Or I want to figure out how to get through a terror mission with a perfect score . . .

Fuck anti-cheating measures.

Out the fuck you should get.

 

[Surf Solar]

There are two different schools of thought here. One says that reloading after a skill check is cheating and should be penalized, the other says reloading is a perfectly legitimate way of experimenting and experiencing different outcomes without having to replay the whole fucking game. I firmly stand on the latter. If you think reloading is cheating don't fucking do it. If I feel like reloading 20 times just to see what would happen if I succeed in a nearly impossible check, that's my business. In most cases it is not worth the trouble, but it should always be up to the player and nobody else to make the call of how much metagaming is worth the effort.

Yup. I personally wouldn't bother with anti-cheat mechanics. If people want to spoil their fun - let them.
What also can be done (and what I like) is what the poster on page wrote, having not only 2 sides for a skillcheck - win/fail - but more nuances, call it "softfails" ( :D ) for that matter. So that there are more nuances between "Whoah dude you totally rocked that quest!" and "You horribly screwed it, the world will end now because of you.". Can be anything from a slightly less reward, to only half the xp from the maximum, to some crappier version of a , let's say, weapon with a higher broken count more prone to repair to the one you'd have received if you would have done it 100% right. Imo, players wouldn't surely reload if they get atleast anything, and not just a "check/quest failed" line, I know I would.

 

[Davaris]

Stopping reloading is easy - just remove random element from dialogue skill checks, or pre-roll them at the start of the game.

That is diabolical. That would make the future preordained and we could do nothing to change it.

It could be interesting as well. Like rolling a character, you roll the kind of game you want, before playing it.

I wonder if any games have done this and given a representation of the kind of game to expect, for a certain roll?

I know you are talking about storing all rolls in an array of data and accessing that. I am talking about storing rolls in the game's branching structures and giving an indication of what that structure might be, before hand.

 

[Shemar]

There are two different schools of thought here. One says that reloading after a skill check is cheating and should be penalized, the other says reloading is a perfectly legitimate way of experimenting and experiencing different outcomes without having to replay the whole fucking game. I firmly stand on the latter. If you think reloading is cheating don't fucking do it. If I feel like reloading 20 times just to see what would happen if I succeed in a nearly impossible check, that's my business. In most cases it is not worth the trouble, but it should always be up to the player and nobody else to make the call of how much metagaming is worth the effort.

Yup. I personally wouldn't bother with anti-cheat mechanics. If people want to spoil their fun - let them.
What also can be done (and what I like) is what the poster on page wrote, having not only 2 sides for a skillcheck - win/fail - but more nuances, call it "softfails" ( :D ) for that matter. So that there are more nuances between "Whoah dude you totally rocked that quest!" and "You horribly screwed it, the world will end now because of you.". Can be anything from a slightly less reward, to only half the xp from the maximum, to some crappier version of a , let's say, weapon with a higher broken count more prone to repair to the one you'd have received if you would have done it 100% right. Imo, players wouldn't surely reload if they get atleast anything, and not just a "check/quest failed" line, I know I would.

Yeah, I generally do not like the idea of any single die roll having too significant an impact. As has been mentioned before in this thread, combat achieves that by being the combinations of a great number of individual rolls and stats. In skill checks the best way to do so is to use not only gradual results as you mention but also die rolls that are more prone to give average results than extreme ones (for example 3d6 instead of 1d20), which would help make the results that depend on level of success or failure much more realistic.

 

[JaySn]

Out the fuck you should get.

You're just mad that I'm expressing your sentiments in a logical and clear way.

I forgive you.

 

[shihonage]

That is diabolical. That would make the future preordained and we could do nothing to change it.

It could be interesting as well. Like rolling a character, you roll the kind of game you want, before playing it.

Only within the framework of a tiny slice of optional interaction. Each interaction is a vector in a different direction that you choose. The game consists of many of these. The fact that it's prerolled isn't known to player - he only knows that reloading doesn't change the outcome.

In my particular preroll system (which I use in hacking), it's not 100% written in stone. Sure, right now, at level 5, you can keep trying to crack this panel and keep failing repeatedly.

But, when you reach level 6, your related skill(s) may exceed the seeded roll, at which point you may actually succeed in cracking the panel.

I wonder if any games have done this and given a representation of the kind of game to expect, for a certain roll?

I know you are talking about storing all rolls in an array of data and accessing that. I am talking about storing rolls in the game's branching structures and giving an indication of what that structure might be, before hand.

I'm afraid I can't picture what you're trying to convey.

 

[Davaris]

I'm afraid I can't picture what you're trying to convey.

As you roll stats at the start of a game to create the kind of player you want, so the same can be done to create the kind of game you want.

Imagine the player rolls dice and the game determines what the factions are like. Their history, who leads them, what their attitudes are to each other and to you and this information is given to the player in whole or in part at the beginning of the game.

 

[shihonage]

This works well for games like Dwarf Fortress, but this approach would be dramatically crippled for games where there's a need for NPCs to communicate with player in coherent human language.

 

[lisac2k]

This works well for games like Dwarf Fortress, but this approach would be dramatically crippled for games where there's a need for NPCs to communicate with player in coherent human language.

Or/and it would need an incomprehensive amount of content (quests, dialogs, etc.) and logical interactions between content subdivisions in order to logically follow up roll varieties. But the general idea is not bad and certainly can be applied in some scenarios.

 

[Longshanks]

I hate the Fallout NV system (or coloured Mass Effect lines), there's no reason to read any of the other lines without the skill checks because you know they'll fail. And, whether I have the required skill points or not, there's no reason to even read the dialogue with the attached Skill check. It's a horrible system designed to have you play the mechanics.

I like dialogue that only appears if you have the necessary skills

PC. "I don't know dick about spaceships. Forget it, I'll hitchhike." /*minimal Science*/
PC. "Smoke coming out of your engine... Yessir, I'd say that's your problem." /*some Science*/
PC. "That annoying sound is your flux modulator... -and, incidentally, it's about to blow." /*enough Science*/
PC. "Your engine isn't my only concern... You need a stronger heat shield if we're going to Reigl VII." /*enough Science AND observation check*/
PC. "I don't kick start a diagonistics robot until we talk credits..." /*some Science*/

Let players read without thinking about the mechanics. Make them pay attention and they'll enjoy it more. Once they realise what is possible in the dialogue they'll experiment and invest in non-combat stats.

I find myself reloading Fallout NV and changing clothes, hats and taking pills just to make a dialogue line. I hate it (no, I can't stop). It breaks the flow of the conversation, and removes any reason to play in character as I'll only choose the obviously successful option. I also don't mind slipping in Skill checks alongside the hardcoded ones; sometimes it should be obvious that the line would involve a % check. I do this a lot with something like Intimidate. You have a pissweak insult or threat as a default (that leads to a fight), a line for those with moderate Intimidate with a moderate chance of success (and equal chance of a fight), and a high Intimidate line with a high chance of success and perhaps lighter penalty outcomes.

But when all the metagame info is removed I find during testing choosing some of the other threats (or persuades) if they're in character or funny. And it's a lot more fun when playing the dialogue and not the stats.

Works well for showing success lines after a roll. You have 65 in Science, here's your dialogue line...
Because the rolls/checks are taking place automatically without you having to make a choice.

However, if the rolls/checks take place after the click:

1. Observe Jimmy's behaviour in order to determine whether he is homosexual.

outcome: check failed. Your Small Guns skill is too low.
wtf? Small Guns!

I'd prefer tags. As the chances of misreading what the developer means is high. Too much ambiguity in language to clearly specify the skill or stat in use without using code words, which are really no better than tags.

If I'm testing my character's skills or stats, I want to know which ones are being interrogated.

 

[DraQ]

There are two different schools of thought here. One says that reloading after a skill check is cheating and should be penalized, the other says reloading is a perfectly legitimate way of experimenting and experiencing different outcomes without having to replay the whole fucking game.

Indeed. The former is suitable for RPGs, the latter works brilliantly for Sierra-style adventures where you get killed over and over in hilarious ways for even slightest mistakes.

It's certainly not suitable for games of resource and threat management where limitation of knowledge is an important mechanics (think of all the ambushes and meticulously crafted encounters you can render pointless with mindless save-scout-die-reload routine), nor interactive narratives where you make meaningful choices.
And it's certainly unsuitable for probabilistic games, since it messes with probabilities.

If you want to have meaningful probabilities and reloads, you need to make reloads affect probabilities in such way that they don't tend to one when the number of reloads increases.

If you think reloading is cheating don't fucking do it. If I feel like reloading 20 times just to see what would happen if I succeed in a nearly impossible check, that's my business. In most cases it is not worth the trouble, but it should always be up to the player and nobody else to make the call of how much metagaming is worth the effort.

Oblivious fast travel argument detected: "loldunuseit". Dismissed by default.

Also, design elements like that don't exist in vacuum, they influence other design elements. If anything it's free reloads that permit asinine ultra hard checks thrown in for lulz rather than for actual reason, since player can progress anyway, no matter how misdesigned some situation is.

Stopping reloading is easy - just remove random element from dialogue skill checks, or pre-roll them at the start of the game.

That is diabolical. That would make the future preordained and we could do nothing to change it.

I'm strong opponent of such approach. For starters, sometimes you *do* need to reload and sometimes it is due to extremely unfavourable streak of rolls. Having all rolls predetermined would remove such failsafe.

Additionally, predetermined rolls themselves can be source of metagaming information and as such can be exploited by skilful player. You can do a great deal of fine tuning and experiment in a very controlled manner when you always roll the same at given action. Unpredictability is only useful if it's truly unpredictable.

I know you are talking about storing all rolls in an array of data and accessing that. I am talking about storing rolls in the game's branching structures and giving an indication of what that structure might be, before hand.

Either would be impractical and retarded.

First, you don't store roll results, you store random seed generated at the beginning of the game and obtain always the same results while using several orders of magnitude less memory.

Second, rolls so predefined that you could always determine context mean extremely railroaded and scripted 'game' - which equals shit. And it would mean extreme amounts of meta-knowledge being fed to the player at the beginning which equals doubly shit.

Out the fuck you should get.

You're just mad that I'm expressing your sentiments in a logical and clear way.

Lolno.

RPGs are games where you make choices and roll with them. That's their whole point. Whether they are choices made during the game via dialogue or actions, or choices made during chargen, the whole point is that their consequences are enforced by the mechanics. If you made a shit pickpocket but suddenly feel the urge to plant explosives on someone for shits and giggles, you're out of luck - any other approach equals larping if it makes mechanical limitations merely easily bypassable propositions. You should have thought about it when you were making your character - that's what chargen is for.

Now, since we've made this one clear, GTFO.

 

[shihonage]

I'm strong opponent of such approach. For starters, sometimes you *do* need to reload and sometimes it is due to extremely unfavourable streak of rolls. Having all rolls predetermined would remove such failsafe.

Erm, "extremely unfavourable streak of rolls"? Also known as "gameplay" ?

See, I can't pre-roll for actions I cannot anticipate. I can only pre-roll for things like hacking, lockpicking and such.

So, you can always reload and exploit the combat rolls. You can't exploit hacking rolls however.

Additionally, predetermined rolls themselves can be source of metagaming information and as such can be exploited by skilful player. You can do a great deal of fine tuning and experiment in a very controlled manner when you always roll the same at given action. Unpredictability is only useful if it's truly unpredictable.

I don't see at all how this can be exploited. If you crack the chest, then decide to seal it off again, I'll just pre-roll your next cracking attempt. If you don't seal it off, it's already cracked.

 

[JaySn]

DraQ, a game, regardless of genre, need not always be taken so seriously as to limit a player's choice in their actions (not their player character, in this case), no?

In terms of rending scripted encounters obsolete by save scumming, this is only a problem after the encounter as occurred. Is it not my choice rather than the game developers to determine how meaningful such encounters are for me? Coming upon mutants in the wastes and getting turned into a purple gel isn't an ideal situation, or expected the first time it happens. How does having a save at Junktown then invalidate this first encounter? Fucking about, I can then try a few times to make it through the area without an encounter. Once I have, I'll then get my ass handed to me be supermutants. I can then reload and go on my merry way as though that side-trip never happened. This, of course, has nothing to do with decisions made in my character build.

It can be fun to break out of character and try to take different actions.

(A similar system of using a seed generated at the start of the game is found in Civilization 4/Colonization 4. It is not used for combat rolls, however. These still depend on pure luck. The developers were clever enough to add the ability to reuse the seed after a reload to ensure events remained the same -- one did not need to select it every time if one did not wish to.)

 

[Davaris]

Second, rolls so predefined that you could always determine context mean extremely railroaded and scripted 'game' - which equals shit. And it would mean extreme amounts of meta-knowledge being fed to the player at the beginning which equals doubly shit.

At the other end of the extreme you have games where the player has lost his memory...

My idea would be to determine who is who and what their initial attitudes are. What is rail road is each time you start a game, the characters are always exactly the same and always have the same attitudes when they first meet the player. It makes replays kind of boring.

If anything what I am thinking of would force the dev to code his game, allowing for more possibilities, because you could initially meet a person and they could like you, or not know you/dislike you and you have to work to get into their good books.

This works well for games like Dwarf Fortress, but this approach would be dramatically crippled for games where there's a need for NPCs to communicate with player in coherent human language.

Yeah I see what you mean. I've been getting more interested in these kinds of games the last couple of years. They are world simulations, rather than games with fixed story paths running through them. They are fun to code and think about, but not as interesting to play. Someone has to figure out how to make the story part interesting.

 

[DraQ]

Erm, "extremely unfavourable streak of rolls"? Also known as "gameplay" ?

No, also known as "you're irreversibly screwed".

You can minimize the need for reloading due to RNG hating the player, but you can't eliminate it.

See, I can't pre-roll for actions I cannot anticipate. I can only pre-roll for things like hacking, lockpicking and such.

You can. You won't store results of the rolls anyway, unless you're more terminally impaired at programming than bethesduh collective of coders, but you can store seed and always obtain the same results.

So, you can always reload and exploit the combat rolls. You can't exploit hacking rolls however.

All knowledge is exploitable. Details depend on exact implementation.

I don't see at all how this can be exploited. If you crack the chest, then decide to seal it off again, I'll just pre-roll your next cracking attempt. If you don't seal it off, it's already cracked.

If the roll is generated based on the number of the action of given type and seed (giving same sequence of rolls), I can waste unfavourable rolls on easy shit and use favourable rolls on tough shit.

If the result is determined by seed and object id, I can still work around it by allocating my resources extremely precisely (for example taking exact amount of explosive charges necessary), I can circumvent any sort of failure mechanics that's in place making designing elaborate failure mechanics pointless.

Additionally, having static result for probabilistic action is just stupid - IRL you can try picking a lock as long as you want and provided you don't get caught or don't break something you may eventually succeed. If the game doesn't implement static rolls, but instead always creates the same sequence of rolls for given action and object, I can for example break my crappy lockpicks on the rolls doomed for failure, but use one good one for the roll that will succeed. If critical failure is noisy I can make it happen when guards are furthest away.

Of course, you can make the result determined by more and more variables, but since it increases the number of possible outcomes available to the player by influencing those variables, you might just as well go with true randomness.

The problem with RPGs isn't how probabilities are calculated, it's that reloading skews all probabilities. That's the main advantage of ironman games apart from knowing that shit's real. OTOH sometimes ironman mechanics is way too punishing, so we do need saves and we do need ability to save at any point we want. The only way out is to render reloading undesirable or pointless. Pre-determined rolls don't accomplish the latter, since they give player powers of precognition making reloading desirable despite no change in roll results.
You need to tweak probabilities on the fly so that reloading doesn't improve chance of success or to punish the player in some subtle and non-crippling way.

There is simply no other way.

@Davaris:
Randomization of various aspects of gameworld and making them persist during single playthrough is desirable, but completely distinct from doing the same with rolls.

In terms of rending scripted encounters obsolete by save scumming, this is only a problem after the encounter as occurred.

Except that saves mean time travel.

Is it not my choice rather than the game developers to determine how meaningful such encounters are for me?

No. This logic has been explored already and that way lies oblivion.

Coming upon mutants in the wastes and getting turned into a purple gel isn't an ideal situation, or expected the first time it happens. How does having a save at Junktown then invalidate this first encounter?

There is no reward for being careful if you can be your own suicide scouting party.

This, of course, has nothing to do with decisions made in my character build.

It does if you keep reloading waiting for a lucky roll when shooting a mutant in the eye, opening a chest or neglecting to carry cure disease potions while battling post-pestilence zombies in any game where disease can screw you badly.

It can be fun to break out of character and try to take different actions.

Yes, but the mechanics should still be the criterion verifying the outcome of those actions. Otherwise you're larping.

And any probabilistic mechanics doesn't work terribly well if player can skew probabilities to his heart's content.

(A similar system of using a seed generated at the start of the game is found in Civilization 4/Colonization 4. It is not used for combat rolls, however. These still depend on pure luck. The developers were clever enough to add the ability to reuse the seed after a reload to ensure events remained the same -- one did not need to select it every time if one did not wish to.)

World rolls and action rolls are entirely different issues.

 

[shihonage]

No, also known as "you're irreversibly screwed".

You can minimize the need for reloading due to RNG hating the player, but you can't eliminate it.

If you managed to get yourself into a position where your real progress in the game is tied to a series of random events SUCCEEDING IN A ROW, then that's either:

a) really poor design (you have to get through these 3 doors consequentially to get to the exit grid!)
b) an extremely unlikely scenario that is nonetheless FIXED by a reload (you stealthed your way into enemy base with no weapons, relying solely on your hacking skills to get their ammo stashes, and failed to hack them, now exposed and surrounded by enemies)

You can. You won't store results of the rolls anyway, unless you're more terminally impaired at programming than bethesduh collective of coders, but you can store seed and always obtain the same results.

Not only your scenario breaks with a slightest call to the random generator (even if I use it for falling leaves in background), or player going slightly off-script, but I'm also AGAINST pre-rolling in combat, so this is moot.

If the result is determined by seed and object id, I can still work around it by allocating my resources extremely precisely (for example taking exact amount of explosive charges necessary), I can circumvent any sort of failure mechanics that's in place making designing elaborate failure mechanics pointless.

This all sounds too vague for me to translate into a real exploit. As a player, all you know is that you rolled and failed, and repeating the roll continues to fail. You are not told that the result is pre-rolled for you, that is the matter of the engine programming, not gameplay interface.

Additionally, having static result for probabilistic action is just stupid - IRL you can try picking a lock as long as you want and provided you don't get caught or don't break something you may eventually succeed. If the game doesn't implement static rolls, but instead always creates the same sequence of rolls for given action and object, I can for example break my crappy lockpicks on the rolls doomed for failure, but use one good one for the roll that will succeed. If critical failure is noisy I can make it happen when guards are furthest away.

The system that pre-rolls a "SERIES" would be dumb, programmatically unworthy, and indeed exploitable.

Of course, you can make the result determined by more and more variables, but since it increases the number of possible outcomes available to the player by influencing those variables, you might just as well go with true randomness.

The problem with RPGs isn't how probabilities are calculated, it's that reloading skews all probabilities. That's the main advantage of ironman games apart from knowing that shit's real. OTOH sometimes ironman mechanics is way too punishing, so we do need saves and we do need ability to save at any point we want. The only way out is to render reloading undesirable or pointless. Pre-determined rolls don't accomplish the latter, since they give player powers of precognition making reloading desirable despite no change in roll results.
You need to tweak probabilities on the fly so that reloading doesn't improve chance of success or to punish the player in some subtle and non-crippling way.

There is simply no other way.

You do realize this brings us to square one, where reloading ad infinity eventually lets you crack that safe which you were supposed to have 1 in 100 chance of cracking. Rendering the very idea of skills useless. Destroying player's desire to level his related skills.

Precognition is a flaw in a pre-roll system, yes. But is it a bigger flaw than the above?

My pre-roll system doesn't roll just the CONCLUSION of "success or failure". It rolls a certain "data" that isn't finished processing. It gets "CONCLUSION" processed when you ATTEMPT to crack the safe, and therefore the roll's result is only TRULY fixed until your related skill is boosted. At that point you may have a chance of cracking the safe.

 

[Shemar]

It's certainly not suitable for games of resource and threat management where limitation of knowledge is an important mechanics (think of all the ambushes and meticulously crafted encounters you can render pointless with mindless save-scout-die-reload routine), nor interactive narratives where you make meaningful choices.
And it's certainly unsuitable for probabilistic games, since it messes with probabilities.

Bullshit. That is exactly where it is relevant, where I want to see the alternatives without replaying the whole game. It would be pointless in games where the choices do not make any difference.

If you want to have meaningful probabilities and reloads, you need to make reloads affect probabilities in such way that they don't tend to one when the number of reloads increases.

All I want is to be able to see aht happens behind several sets of choices without replaying the game. It is very rare that I will care enough to do so (less than once per game on average), but I still want to be able to do that.

Oblivious fast travel argument detected: "loldunuseit". Dismissed by default.

Yes, most morons do.

Also, design elements like that don't exist in vacuum, they influence other design elements. If anything it's free reloads that permit asinine ultra hard checks thrown in for lulz rather than for actual reason, since player can progress anyway, no matter how misdesigned some situation is.

That is just bad design and utterly irrelevant. It is one thing not to penalize reloads, it is another to design a game based on the assumption of reloads. Even a moron like you should be able to tell the difference.

RPGs are games where you make choices and roll with them. That's their whole point. Whether they are choices made during the game via dialogue or actions, or choices made during chargen, the whole point is that their consequences are enforced by the mechanics. If you made a shit pickpocket but suddenly feel the urge to plant explosives on someone for shits and giggles, you're out of luck - any other approach equals larping if it makes mechanical limitations merely easily bypassable propositions. You should have thought about it when you were making your character - that's what chargen is for.

So, I expect that you restart the entire game every time you die. After all, you made your choices now you have to roll with them. Idiot.

 

[DraQ]

If you managed to get yourself into a position where your real progress in the game is tied to a series of random events SUCCEEDING IN A ROW

How about a series of random events NOT FAILING IN A ROW?

This all sounds too vague for me to translate into a real exploit. As a player, all you know is that you rolled and failed, and repeating the roll continues to fail. You are not told that the result is pre-rolled for you, that is the matter of the engine programming, not gameplay interface.

I can determine how does the engine work through experimentation and exploit my findings.

You do realize this brings us to square one, where reloading ad infinity eventually lets you crack that safe which you were supposed to have 1 in 100 chance of cracking. Rendering the very idea of skills useless. Destroying player's desire to level his related skills.

Precognition is a flaw in a pre-roll system, yes. But is it a bigger flaw than the above?

It's certainly exacerbated by the above.

The only way out is to either tweak probabilities on reloads so that the cumulative chance of success tends to some value other than 1, which would be a hellish task, if at all possible, or to just impart temporary penalties on the player on reloads.

My pre-roll system doesn't roll just the CONCLUSION of "success or failure". It rolls a certain "data" that isn't finished processing. It gets "CONCLUSION" processed when you ATTEMPT to crack the safe, and therefore the roll's result is only TRULY fixed until your related skill is boosted. At that point you may have a chance of cracking the safe.

I know.

It's certainly not suitable for games of resource and threat management where limitation of knowledge is an important mechanics (think of all the ambushes and meticulously crafted encounters you can render pointless with mindless save-scout-die-reload routine), nor interactive narratives where you make meaningful choices.
And it's certainly unsuitable for probabilistic games, since it messes with probabilities.

Bullshit. That is exactly where it is relevant, where I want to see the alternatives without replaying the whole game. It would be pointless in games where the choices do not make any difference.

If you want to have meaningful probabilities and reloads, you need to make reloads affect probabilities in such way that they don't tend to one when the number of reloads increases.

All I want is to be able to see aht happens behind several sets of choices without replaying the game. It is very rare that I will care enough to do so (less than once per game on average), but I still want to be able to do that.

And this is why we can't have good things - because at every step there are thyroxine deficient retards, like Shemar, baawing loudly whenever improvements are proposed, be them delayed consequences, emergent gameplay extending beyond pre-scripted branching or attempts to fix savescumming exploits more lenient than forced ironman, that would inconvenience their savescumming antics.

 

[JarlFrank]

I usually agree with yoru stuff DraQ but I occasionally do savescumming so in this case I don't

 

[DraQ]

I usually agree with yoru stuff DraQ but I occasionally do savescumming so in this case I don't

Everyone does, but I'd rather have improvements than ability to savescum freely.

 

[Shemar]

I'd rather have improvements than ability to savescum freely.

And how small a brain does it take to assume the two are mutually exclusive?

delayed consequences, emergent gameplay extending beyond pre-scripted branching

The reason you can't have this is that unless done on a quality level never seen before, the results will have more of a negative impact on a game than a positive. Otherwise 'delayed consequences' are just moronic 'gotchas' and 'emergent gamepaplay' is synonymous to 'boring and repetitive with nothng interesting happening'.

attempts to fix savescumming exploits

Nothing to fix. You don't like save scumming, have the fucking balls not to do it. Maybe if game developers wasted less time idiot proofing their games thay could add some better gameplay.