What's the deal with game theory, anyway?

[Joe Krow]

Tyeing it back to game theory- the first thing they look at is the rules. If the rule set is completely open then the "options" are limitless. On the other hand limitless options are not necessarily relevant or compelling.

Ideally a system that always allowed a wide range of possible actions and then, on occasion, rewarded them in unique ways would be better then a mapped "tree" of possibilities. The player would stand as an equal partner with the designer and those unique instances would manifest as a "meeting of the minds" which would draw the player in. The player should be asking "did the designer intend me to do this."

We want to believe we are doing something unique whether it be our character build, equipment, the locations, or our approach to situations. It's all about frequency of outcomes. "Gaming" a system is about optimization but it is also about derailing the system... finding the boundaries. When the player takes an intuitive step rather then making a selection his connection with the game is increased.

It's just a matter of defining the ideal rule set within the current potential of the computer. Once you've done that go back and make it interesting.

 

[LarsTheSurly]

Here are a few examples of how a player might be able to indicate his character's style in specific situations: An assassin might inflict particularly painful blows to someone he hates, taking care so that he can stare into his eyes and watch him die slowly. He might offer to put him out of his misery in exchange for information -- a promise he may or may not keep. A paladin might negotiate with a merchant in good faith, determined not to cheat him, knowing that his status and charisma could give him an unfair advantage. A thief might start targeting his victims for their political, religious or social status.

Disclaimer: I'm not harping on you because I think your idea is stupid. I'm just pointing out the flaws that I see from a programmer's point of view.

I don't think you're fully grasping the problem. Those are all interesting examples, but they're examples of writing, not programming. Those are all clear-cut good/evil actions, sort of like Knights of the Old Republic, where certain actions would move your light/dark bar. People would sometimes react to you differently if you were heavy light or dark side, but we're dancing around the issue without really touching it.

Examples like that are hard coded into the game. "When you get to Bob the merchant, you can rip him off for evil points or pay his taxes for good points." If I understand correctly, what you really want is for every action you take, no matter how large or small, to influence your character in some way. Even if it were possible to achieve this, the game would end up feeling extremely... railroadish. A perceptive gamer would quickly identify what actions would provoke what reactions, and what the ramifications would be. A situation like this would ironically provide a feeling of "static choices." Look at Mass Effect. The character interactions seemed new and exciting at first, but then everyone figured out that bottom = renegade and top = paragon. Conversations then lost the feel of "What would my character say," and became "Ok, I'm a good guy so I'll pick the top right choice again."

 

[Squeek]

Nobody can program every single possibility on how to take an action.

Those are all interesting examples, but they're examples of writing, not programming...Examples like that are hard coded into the game.

Actually, I'm talking about doing some, but not all, of both. The Dude had the right idea when he said this:

You could after all track a lot of the PC's actions through the game fairly easily. Stuff like time spent sneaking, doors bashed, times you picked a certain type of dialogue line (surly, asshole, joking, etc) types of magic used (fire, ice, mind control, etc), types of attacks used (power attack, backstabs, called shots), and a lot more stuff like that. Then the game could periodically check these stats and award a Fallout like perk affecting the game, the PC's stats or skills or something along those lines. Such a system wouldn't even be that time consuming to implement if done right, and could be pretty rewarding.

Style and personality statistics could become part of the character profile and be considered at various points in the game to open new quest paths, enable unique abilities at level-up, or determine specific treasure types. So the purpose of putting a control on the interface to indicate style and personality isn't to prompt NPC responses; it's to generate those statistics.

My examples are ways I think games could be taken further in that direction, ways games could be designed to provide characters with those kinds of personality and style choices. Obviously, that would be to enable consequences.

So it's not all one way or all the other, not a matter of accounting for every possibility either randomly or through hard coding. My idea is put more emphasis on roles by generating and then using statistics for style and personality.

 

[elander_]

Magic the Gathering was developed by a professor of maths called Richard Garfield but you don't have to know maths to design (just play a lot of them and pay attention to the good ones). However math theory helps with the details like making sure that games are well balanced and that you can play in an intelligent way and discover interesting tactics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering

There are two things i expect from the game play. One is that it helps telling the story you want to tell with your game (in case it's a game where you tell a story) and the other is that it makes my brain cells working. A few days ago i was playing Hitman - Blood Money and i spent a good amount of time following npcs and learning their movement patterns so that i could get the full payment for the contract and also get a briefcase full with diamonds. You can finish the contract just by using excessive violence and kill all body guards in the casino but then a good amount of the money will go for bribes and to buy a new id. It's great to be able to think to play a game optimally but without being stalled from progressing in the game. In fact that level had a bug and could not be done with a 100% payment so i had to kockout a guard.

What i'm talking about here are universal game design principles that should be applied to all games whose purpose is to simulate an imaginary world no matter if they are rpgs or fps.