Grinning and bearing it - Permanent injury
Author
Just out of interest, how different from the norm are your own game designs? Do you just reiterate what has been done in the past ... i.e. are your objections really based on wanting every roleplay game to follow the templates of the one before it, are you supportive of new ideas in general.. or are permanent injuries really a turn off for players and its just a plain bad idea?
I think the point everyone is making is that permanent injury is bad because the player is devolving instead of evolving over time and that while you can try to add rewards for the injury that really goes against what the player expects and breaks immersion.
I still think it’s possible to pull it off but you’d need to do something about quick save / load. Perhaps you take the approach of continuous saving (not checkpoints, but the game always maintains player state). Now the player can’t just load if they make a mistake. In this case you’d have to address the death condition as it could no longer be a “game over” since there is no loading.
As far as strength progression, you could do something like the following: Let’s say the character starts the game at a full health status with no real abilities to speak of. As the game progresses he gets physically weaker but he acquires abilities that offset this physical weakness.
Another option is to reverse the standard game progression and start the character out strong, along with all the enemies, and over time as the player weakens so do the enemies. In this style, rather than trying to become more powerful than your enemies, the player is focused on minimizing injury to stay more powerful than the enemies as everyone gets progressively weaker. While this could be fun, I think a lot of players would feel discouraged at always getting weaker. You’d probably need to introduce some type of system to keep players motivated.
I still think it’s possible to pull it off but you’d need to do something about quick save / load. Perhaps you take the approach of continuous saving (not checkpoints, but the game always maintains player state). Now the player can’t just load if they make a mistake. In this case you’d have to address the death condition as it could no longer be a “game over” since there is no loading.
As far as strength progression, you could do something like the following: Let’s say the character starts the game at a full health status with no real abilities to speak of. As the game progresses he gets physically weaker but he acquires abilities that offset this physical weakness.
Another option is to reverse the standard game progression and start the character out strong, along with all the enemies, and over time as the player weakens so do the enemies. In this style, rather than trying to become more powerful than your enemies, the player is focused on minimizing injury to stay more powerful than the enemies as everyone gets progressively weaker. While this could be fun, I think a lot of players would feel discouraged at always getting weaker. You’d probably need to introduce some type of system to keep players motivated.
Quote:Original post by gxaxhxOr just let them die, and start over with a new character - most rogue-likes take this tack, as do diablo and escape velocity on harcore mode.
In this case you’d have to address the death condition as it could no longer be a “game over” since there is no loading.
Quote:Another option is to reverse the standard game progression and start the character out strong, along with all the enemies, and over time as the player weakens so do the enemies... While this could be fun, I think a lot of players would feel discouraged at always getting weaker. You’d probably need to introduce some type of system to keep players motivated.Warcraft II - TFT did something like this for the undead campaign, where Arthas loses strength and abilities between every level. It quickly became very annoying, but the campaign was primarily story driven, so one tends to play it through anyway.
Quote:Original post by swiftcoder
Warcraft II - TFT did something like this for the undead campaign, where Arthas loses strength and abilities between every level. It quickly became very annoying, but the campaign was primarily story driven, so one tends to play it through anyway.
Yeah, I played that undead compaign. The real problem with this system is that taken in it's raw form, you present everything to the player at the begining and then start taking things away. This just causes frustration and boredom since taking away often leads to fewer choices.
To pull this off you'd have to find a way to introduce expanded abilities as the player gets weaker. So, maybe the player starts off just punching or something but when you loose your arm you now have a weapon and it introduces a new style of fighting.
Quote:Original post by kingy
Permanent or not, I already have the removal of both arms, or both legs as a game over condition. I think that is fair enough, as the hero's ability to defend himself is practically non existent in that state.
Whaaat? That just sounds like a flesh wound...
Seriously though I'm against permanent injury for any "serious" game. Your rationale is that it would be a great sense of accomplishment to emerge from the dungeon battered and broken... But that would only be because it was incredible difficult and frustrating to be battered and broken while in the dungeon.
If it was say, a flash game, where there was basically one long level to the game, and you only really had a playtime of like 10 minutes, then yeah it might be fun if you could lose an arm and a leg but somehow keep dragging yourself through. The frustration from being crippled like that wouldn't be as bad, because of the shortness and nature of the game
Quote:Original post by kingy
...or are permanent injuries really a turn off for players and its just a plain bad idea?
I imagine it would be a turn off for the majority of players.
People spend a lot of time building up their characters, and progressing through the story. If they suddenly get irreversibly gimped because a fight went a bit wrong, they aren't going to be massively happy if their only options are "start again from scratch" or "struggle on with a character who now sucks".
There are a some hardcore players that enjoy the challenge that this sort of gameplay brings, but they are very much a minority. If you're happy to limit your audience to the hardcore roguelike fans, knock yourself out. But if you want a broader appeal then there needs to be some way of fixing your character up afterwards.
As an example of how a permanent injury can irreparably gimp a character; suppose I spend all my time mastering two handed weapon fighting styles, and then lost an arm? Suddenly my painstakingly specialised character fights like a complete moron because the only weapons he's any good at using are now unusable.
I can't imagine players going for it. If you've got the ability to reload, then nobody will be able to resist that "undo" button and go for a clean run. Roguelikes, okay, but they tend to be short and brutal, and losing an arm would last about as long as you'd expect it to--long enough for the guy who chopped it off to finish the job.
There's a lot of dramatic merit in a crippling wound, or even just a disfigurement, but you can't count on gameplay to produce dramatic events at appropriate times. Even in a roguelike, if I get beaten so badly that it'll take me a lot of careful playing to get back to town, and will never be back to 100% combat effective status, the character is effectively dead, and I usually just reroll, rather than trying to stabilize a broken game piece.
The only time I can see permanent injury functioning is if the character has value outside of his fitness. If he's a great cartographer, or a navigator, or an engineer, or a translator, or a cryptographer, or a chef, and he loses his leg and one eye, then you build a stretcher or get him a wheelchair or put him on a mule and bring him along, because he still has a lot to offer. It doesn't seem like your game will put a lot of value on non-combat activities, so I'd say forget it, and either take out the wounds, or make it possible to heal them on-the-fly, like the medical mini-game in Metal Gear Solid 3, where you'd bandage yourself between gunfights and catch and eat food.
There's a lot of dramatic merit in a crippling wound, or even just a disfigurement, but you can't count on gameplay to produce dramatic events at appropriate times. Even in a roguelike, if I get beaten so badly that it'll take me a lot of careful playing to get back to town, and will never be back to 100% combat effective status, the character is effectively dead, and I usually just reroll, rather than trying to stabilize a broken game piece.
The only time I can see permanent injury functioning is if the character has value outside of his fitness. If he's a great cartographer, or a navigator, or an engineer, or a translator, or a cryptographer, or a chef, and he loses his leg and one eye, then you build a stretcher or get him a wheelchair or put him on a mule and bring him along, because he still has a lot to offer. It doesn't seem like your game will put a lot of value on non-combat activities, so I'd say forget it, and either take out the wounds, or make it possible to heal them on-the-fly, like the medical mini-game in Metal Gear Solid 3, where you'd bandage yourself between gunfights and catch and eat food.
Author
Some good points being made here, thanks guys.
I'm not really bothered about making a game with broad appeal as there are a million other people doing that and broad appeal generally means dumbed down, copy whatever works from everything else and iterate don't innovate.
That will ultimately kill off the games industry I think. But thats a different issue altogether.
That said, a bad idea is a bad idea and I wouldn't want the game to have no appeal. Perhaps if the player had more than one character it wouldn't be quite so bad.
I'm not really bothered about making a game with broad appeal as there are a million other people doing that and broad appeal generally means dumbed down, copy whatever works from everything else and iterate don't innovate.
That will ultimately kill off the games industry I think. But thats a different issue altogether.
That said, a bad idea is a bad idea and I wouldn't want the game to have no appeal. Perhaps if the player had more than one character it wouldn't be quite so bad.
Have a read of what lionhead studios came across when they were thinking about putting something like this into Fable 2, at first instead of dying a character would be ebat up at which point they would spend the rest of the game with scars etc, this caused people to act differently to the character.
After losts of testing they scrapped this because the majority of players would simply turn off the xbox and reload then have to spend the rest of the game with a scarred character.
After losts of testing they scrapped this because the majority of players would simply turn off the xbox and reload then have to spend the rest of the game with a scarred character.
It is possible to implement this, you just have to limit this mechanic a bit as well as specify/build other areas of the game first to support this mechanic:
I wouldn't make any injury permanent in a game, but I would allow the player to experience the drawbacks of having an injury while playing through a segment of the game - later after you've came out of that segment you could then say head down to your nearest surgeon, magician, or priest and get fixed up / restored back to normal. This would make the player more focused on the actions that they do while in a level, while also being allowed to be renewed after they've came out of that danger area.
That and make sure that all segments inside the game can be solvable under any health condition (for instance, if a level required you to leap over a pit or defeat a boss, I would make sure there are ways you can solve that puzzle with varied health conditions). I would also regard the loss of a limb, any limb, end in eventual death (loss of significant amount of blood).
- Nonfatal Injuries: Anything that you can put a bandage around. Will hinder one or a few of your stats (such as strength, speed, or whatever else you've designed), where the amount of hindrance depend on the severity of the nonfatal injury. Nonfatal injuries can be completely restored by visiting a healing station (safezones such as towns).
- Fatal Injuries: Results in a gameover. For this game, the complete damage or decapitation ("hitpoints" reaching zero) of a body part, including any of the limbs, the head, as well as the trunk of the body. For the head and body, an instant death would result; and for the limbs, you would bleed to death (in other words, there would be a long animation sequence before you get the game over screen).
Then I would also add the skill category of Pain Endurance or something similar (Hardiness, etc), to which the more nonfatal injury you experience ("nonfatal" meaning anything that won't cause a "game over"), the less drawbacks you will receive whenever you receive an injury. I would make it so that the only way to receive experience into Pain Endurance is to enter into combat and be inflicted nonfatal damage by an enemy - in this way the player won't be able to gain experience into Pain Endurance from self-inflicted damage; as well as that, if a player desired to purposefully allow enemy-inflicted damage be inflicted upon him for the sake of earning extra points into Pain Endurance, it would be more difficult to do so as he would have to balance between obtaining a nonfatal condition from that enemy and getting killed by that enemy.
Then I would allow you to save and reload the game anytime, like in every other mainstream game that is out there. The reason why is because since I have made the taking and experiencing pain/damage an actual skill category, it is then up to the player's own decision to engage in the training of that skill (by continuing to play through a game segment with a nonfatal injury). It is up to the player if he wants to go through a level unscathed with full unhindered stats (which is obviously useful), or to go through a level with a nonfatal injury on him (training this particular skill). The player will be made to realize that the only way to gain any experience into Pain Endurance, if he chooses to have this skill, is to act through segments of the game with an enemy-inflicted nonfatal injury. I would also design the game to have later segments testing this particular skill, either by obstacle courses (such as traps), or just by having more difficult enemies as you progress through the game - but of course within limits, nothing too hardcore or requiring you to "grind" this skill in order to overcome these tests. With this in the design plan of the game, the player would be more likely to play through segments of the game keeping an enemy-inflicted injury despite the fact that the game uses save/reload-anytime.
Then finally, I would vary the severity of the drawbacks of nonfatal inflictions according to difficulty level to which can be set by the options of the game.
[Edited by - Tangireon on October 9, 2008 3:13:31 PM]
I wouldn't make any injury permanent in a game, but I would allow the player to experience the drawbacks of having an injury while playing through a segment of the game - later after you've came out of that segment you could then say head down to your nearest surgeon, magician, or priest and get fixed up / restored back to normal. This would make the player more focused on the actions that they do while in a level, while also being allowed to be renewed after they've came out of that danger area.
That and make sure that all segments inside the game can be solvable under any health condition (for instance, if a level required you to leap over a pit or defeat a boss, I would make sure there are ways you can solve that puzzle with varied health conditions). I would also regard the loss of a limb, any limb, end in eventual death (loss of significant amount of blood).
- Nonfatal Injuries: Anything that you can put a bandage around. Will hinder one or a few of your stats (such as strength, speed, or whatever else you've designed), where the amount of hindrance depend on the severity of the nonfatal injury. Nonfatal injuries can be completely restored by visiting a healing station (safezones such as towns).
- Fatal Injuries: Results in a gameover. For this game, the complete damage or decapitation ("hitpoints" reaching zero) of a body part, including any of the limbs, the head, as well as the trunk of the body. For the head and body, an instant death would result; and for the limbs, you would bleed to death (in other words, there would be a long animation sequence before you get the game over screen).
Then I would also add the skill category of Pain Endurance or something similar (Hardiness, etc), to which the more nonfatal injury you experience ("nonfatal" meaning anything that won't cause a "game over"), the less drawbacks you will receive whenever you receive an injury. I would make it so that the only way to receive experience into Pain Endurance is to enter into combat and be inflicted nonfatal damage by an enemy - in this way the player won't be able to gain experience into Pain Endurance from self-inflicted damage; as well as that, if a player desired to purposefully allow enemy-inflicted damage be inflicted upon him for the sake of earning extra points into Pain Endurance, it would be more difficult to do so as he would have to balance between obtaining a nonfatal condition from that enemy and getting killed by that enemy.
Then I would allow you to save and reload the game anytime, like in every other mainstream game that is out there. The reason why is because since I have made the taking and experiencing pain/damage an actual skill category, it is then up to the player's own decision to engage in the training of that skill (by continuing to play through a game segment with a nonfatal injury). It is up to the player if he wants to go through a level unscathed with full unhindered stats (which is obviously useful), or to go through a level with a nonfatal injury on him (training this particular skill). The player will be made to realize that the only way to gain any experience into Pain Endurance, if he chooses to have this skill, is to act through segments of the game with an enemy-inflicted nonfatal injury. I would also design the game to have later segments testing this particular skill, either by obstacle courses (such as traps), or just by having more difficult enemies as you progress through the game - but of course within limits, nothing too hardcore or requiring you to "grind" this skill in order to overcome these tests. With this in the design plan of the game, the player would be more likely to play through segments of the game keeping an enemy-inflicted injury despite the fact that the game uses save/reload-anytime.
Then finally, I would vary the severity of the drawbacks of nonfatal inflictions according to difficulty level to which can be set by the options of the game.
[Edited by - Tangireon on October 9, 2008 3:13:31 PM]
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