If players know they will lose the ally eventually, the loss will be more acceptable when it occurs. As players will be taking the future loss of the ally as part of the game.

Just make sure the ally is not so important that losing them will cost a player the game or too much change in difficulty (for example, 1 hour instead of 20 minutes to complete a quest without the ally) which will cause extreme frustration for the player.

Quote:Original post by Wavinator
If you have alllies in a game that you can never keep, but that you're better off with than without, does it create frustration or a continuously renewing form of gameplay?

I think that just depends on the game in the sense that:

If you have a 3rd/1st shooter that the goal is to do some task, and your "allys" make it more easy by providing support, but if they die the mission is over, then it is frustrating. I.e. you play through a long hard mission just to have your ally die right at the end as you are about to win. If you lose your ally and the level is harder, but you are not penalized directly for them dying, it makes for a more challenging game play to take part in the mission and protect your allies along the way.

"Useless allies" are frustrating too. In Spore, you can make allies and get ships to be with you, but depending on how hard you have worked to upgrade your spaceship, they die relatively faster and don't do much. My ship was o advanced I could rip through any opposing ship in a few seconds, where as my allies would die pretty fast due to heavy fire. I could stand, well hover, above cities and take the brute of their defensive attacks and not be harmed too much.

The same frustration can happen in Diablo 2 as well. Your merc that you hire can aggro too many monsters and just dies really fast. Some of them are ranged attackers and live longer and provide better benefits for being alive, such as the ones that cast an Arua, so it makes it worth keeping those alive; abet the frustrations at times.

The biggest problem I've seen in games, and I've touched on this already with the Spore example, is that you are usually significantly more powerful than your allies are. As a result, they are mere expendable objects that you don't really care about.

If it were the case that they were more evenly matched with yourself, and you got bonuses and what not for keeping them alive to a certain point in time with the discounts in shops and stuff, if they had to "move on", then the loss is *acceptable* granted that you still get the bonuses of that town from saving that NPC and you would then continue on to get a new more powerful ally. As long as the allies get stronger as you progress, the loss is only natural and part of the challenge.

You should not have to retain anything per se just because the progress up to the point you are at, was the benefit. That ally is not forever in debt to you since it was a mutually beneficial relationship; you saved them, they help you along the way back home. When the ally is in their "hometown" and staying, the contract is up, you get your bonuses from that town for having saved that person, and you move on.

That's my take on it. One last note, the forced loss of an ally, such as Aries in FF7 should never be done again by any game [lol] Stuff like that just sucks and hurts to a certain degree. The emotional reaction people had to that event just shows the profound attachment that people develop to allies, and people like happy endings. Not to say that it was bad or wrong in the sense of decisions made, it was very successful and gave players a purpose of avenging her death, so it was quite effective.

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One last note, the forced loss of an ally, such as Aries in FF7 should never be done again by any game [lol] Stuff like that just sucks and hurts to a certain degree. The emotional reaction people had to that event just shows the profound attachment that people develop to allies, and people like happy endings. Not to say that it was bad or wrong in the sense of decisions made, it was very successful and gave players a purpose of avenging her death, so it was quite effective.

Aerith's death is a good example of what you MUSTN'T do if you have temporary characters in an RPG. From a story perspective, I'd argue that it was a brilliant move from Squaresoft, but from a gameplay perspective, it was an absurd decision to kill that particular character, because she had very unique skills. If Aerith had a more generic skillset, like that of Yuffie of Red XIII, I would have been perfectly fine with her dying. What makes this even more absurd is that, unless you go completely out of your way to grind kills, these unique skills would have been available towards the end of the game even though you can't have her by then. She started with the boring ones.

For this topic, I'd say there are two lessons to learn from Aerith's case:
1: If a character is going to leave mid-game, please make sure that, from a purely gameplay point of view, this character doesn't have exclusive elements. By this, I don't mean to not give him a unique attack that deals heavy damage, I mean that, if the character is the only one you can buff HP, give temporary invincibility, etc. don't make him leave. Give him unique art and animations maybe even unique weapons if you want, so the character is memorable and cool, just don't give him anything that has unique mechanics that cannot be mimiced by another character.

2: Make sure that, by the time the character leaves/dies/turns evil/etc., the player has access to the totality of the loser's skillset. I don't care that the character has a super-overpowered attack if I need to grind 10 hours to get it. I know this one seems obvious, but, strangely, FF7's team didn't get it. (Seems to hint that Aerith's death wasn't planned from the beginning, if anything...)


Other than that, I'd like to say that it's disappointing when a character you have invested time and gold in, and have planned a good build for, get permanently lost. Even when the loss is temporary, it can be annoying (if the game don't allow you to customize a character to replace the old one.) Sometimes, it's for the good of the scenario, but I think it's always a bad decision to sacrifice fun for storytelling. The only exception I can think of is when you want to make a character feel more "epic" by making him awesome-looking and purposely overpowered, but only available for a short amount of time... but again, if losing characters becomes a routine, it won't have the same effect.


PS: I hope nobody got FF7 spoiled... though Aerith's death is to gaming spoilers what Luke's relationship with Vader is to movies, so I'm not worried.

Quote:
For this topic, I'd say there are two lessons to learn from Aerith's case:
1: If a character is going to leave mid-game, please make sure that, from a purely gameplay point of view, this character doesn't have exclusive elements. By this, I don't mean to not give him a unique attack that deals heavy damage, I mean that, if the character is the only one you can buff HP, give temporary invincibility, etc. don't make him leave. Give him unique art and animations maybe even unique weapons if you want, so the character is memorable and cool, just don't give him anything that has unique mechanics that cannot be mimiced by another character.

2: Make sure that, by the time the character leaves/dies/turns evil/etc., the player has access to the totality of the loser's skillset. I don't care that the character has a super-overpowered attack if I need to grind 10 hours to get it. I know this one seems obvious, but, strangely, FF7's team didn't get it. (Seems to hint that Aerith's death wasn't planned from the beginning, if anything...)

I disagree completely :) Aerith's death is rembered, because she had unique skills that player really wanted. Not because she was cool or beautiful or had nice personality. Did the players really need Aerith's skills? No, since many still managed to beat the game. The battles are FF's main gameplay element, if you want to make players feel that they really lost something, you have to extend the loss to gameplay. Completely separate "story" and "gameplay" is never a good idea.

Quote:
PS: I hope nobody got FF7 spoiled... though Aerith's death is to gaming spoilers what Luke's relationship with Vader is to movies, so I'm not worried.

Luke - Vader scene is one of the most memorable film scenes. Aerith's death is one of the most memorable video game scenes. It seems to me that FF7 handled character death pretty well :)

I find it frustrating myself.

Fire Emblem.. If i know a char is going to leave I wont use them
Ill let the other chars that will gain some exp fighting, Even if it makes the battles harder.

In your example, if part of how you treated the npc's controlled what they did in the end, I wouldn't find as bad, since it makes up for needing to hold their hands when the ai doesn't do a good enough job.

Don't make me invest time into something and then take it away from me.

And don't make pleasing the allies to time consuming, ie. i don't want to spend more time doing stuff for the allies than i get back with their help.

An example of this is AOE2. the bots will ally with you for a small free every several minutes. however the bots didn't really help when you allied them, they just stopped attacking you.

In the end you would have better spent your time destroying them and taking their resources and stuff.

Just as you would gain more long term by leveling you avatar rather than please an ally who MAY ditch you just before you need them.

Another point related to the one above is too warn us when they are near leaving or retirement. so that we can either try too please them so they stay or at least use them to fight the next boss/ pirates whatever.