Game Consequences

Often times when playing video games a player will burst out into battle without any thought about the consequence. Weather their cocky, on a roll or just angry it doesn’t always just lead to a pointless death, teammates may lose a match, your entire squad may die, or all progress becomes lost. Understand this is part of games at the moment. Until the creation of Day-z, an arma2 mod, were if you die you lose everything.

All this got me thinking, why players play so different in a zombie game then multiplayer shooters. For me it wasn’t because of progression or pace of game, objectives or any other reason. The only one answer I could find was a game the produced consequences. Under more pressure a normal player may just run in and, “spray and pray” but with consequence combined with pressure the players tend to back away. I believe we need more consequences in games.

So I was wondering how you guys would feel about it, Dying in a game losing all progress, getting betrayed knowing the consequences they brought themselves. Of course you need to balance the games you make no matter what it is (at least I think so). So on top of having the consequence system a reward system being put in place could provide a push you want to play the game, After all the joy in a game is getting past the challenge to receive the reward.

This may just sound like me rambaling but I want to get some good feedback on what I mentioned too, please and thank you.

 

I think loosing ALL the progress is not the sort of thing everybody will be happy to deal with. For example, less frequent checkpoints, bigger rewards when you finish a level without dying, these things should do the trick. But of course there will be always that hardcore guy hoping to loose everything. Try to think in all the groups, and your game will be good for a larger audience. I mean, give the chance of choice, at least...

 

I guess it depends on the game. Losing all progress in a game of Minesweeper is perfectly fine with me; losing it in Skyrim will mean I'll want my money back.

And here's something that's hopefully more useful: A few years back there were a few online persistent worlds that were similar in concept to Day-Z, only they used Neverwinter Nights instead of ArmA 2, and were focused on cooperative roleplaying for the most part, although some PvP action was inevitable every now and then. One particular persistent world was called "A Land Far Away," or ALFA, which proclaimed itself as the place to be for hardcore, "serious" roleplayers, and had a permadeath rule much like the one in Day-Z. All other persistent worlds I knew of had varying degrees of penalties for death, but none went as far as ALFA.

I enjoyed ALFA a lot initially, but as time went by, I've noticed that other worlds that had less hardcore rules attracted more players, and these players seemed to have much more fun that our lot ever had. The high stakes in ALFA led to paranoia and mistrust, and everyone thought everyone else was cheating one way or another. And if a high level character died, chances were that the player would soon eave the game altogether.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Day-Z is a great game, but there were others like it before. And consequences might be a good idea, just be careful of the consequences of having consequences.

 

Play Master Blaster on NES. You have a certain number of lives, and no saving. When you run out of lives, the game is over. Period.

And this was a game that took a long time to beat.

Gamers today are spoiled. I'm afraid there are more "toys" on the market than "games".

 

I fell the same way.

 

This is a prime example of going too far with the stakes in an environment where the trust in other players can't counterbalance the risks appropriately. In the case of Neverwinter Nights, it's important to keep in mind that the game was designed to simulate tabletop RPG experiences between small groups of trusted friends. The level of control of the DM mode in particular wasn't built with large groups of strangers in mind, nor with stakes so high as wiping a player's persistent progress through gameplay that can be controlled by another player (a DM logging in invisible mode and fudging the outcome).

Something to learn from.

 

I think that it all boils down to risk management. You need to find a good balance between risk of dying, penalty of death, and reward.

So if there is a high risk of death, then there needs to be either more reward or less penalty.

I think that the game , in my mind, that hit the most perfect balance is Counter Strike. Think about it. It was one of the first FPS games where you had to wait out the round when you died. You didn't just respawn. So the penalty was waiting. As the game continued the penalty decreased and so people become braver and braver. While at the same time the reward for being reckless at the start is that you can catch people off guard and come out of the match being the star of the show, which is the highest at the start of the match and dies off until you're the last man on the map.

 

ZombieU for the WiiU has a similar concept. Get bit and you turn into a zombie - die and lose all your upgrades and weapons. Then you start as a new character in the same game world but with no inventory. However it is possible to hunt down your previous zombified self and kill him and reclaim your loot.

Risk factor is a great element for games which is under used, however it needs to be balanced out with some sort of reward.

Bring back the good old days when you had one life to complete the entire game!

 

You could say that for Contra, Mario(the first one), Street FIghter 2010, just about any NES game, and those are the "QA tested" ones. Some NES games were just broken.

Back on topic, I think games should have consequences for death, but the game play should allow for quick possession of lost items, like Dead Souls does. If in Skyrim, I'd die and I lose all of my power ups and go back to level one, I'll stop playing immediately.

 

That's an interesting discussion actually, and I just posted some screenshots in my work in progress explaining how I wanted to keep a high risk/reward ratio.

But to play the devil's advocate, I'd mention that while some AAA games managed to keep the "hard mode" spirit brillantly (Ninja Gaiden, Dark Souls, Guild Wars 2, etc), most are constrained with a financial necessity to appeal to broad audiences. So I think this state of mind would be far more represented with indie games, as we don't have that much pressure.
Imho, we should use that advantage to design more "easy to learn, hard to master" mechanics than your regular AAA game.

 

Funny, that's how I feel about Japanese games. DMC easy to play and beat on EASY and NORMAL mode, but if you wanted to be a boss, you had to play on Dante Must Die mode and have nothing but S in every category. Not an easy task at all.

 

Yeah I'm glad Capcom played the risk card with latest DMC
This game received an insane amount of fan bash when it was first unveiled, but they still kept with their plan.
(new world, new style, mature/uncommon content, hard modes)

 

Read up on 'Flow'. It will answer your question.

Flow is that deep focus we get in when playing a good game - when everything else ceases to exist; when time seems to fly by, but at the same time, a few minutes can seem like an hour! And flow requires 4 things: 1) Clear Goals; 2) Immediate Feedback; 3) No Distractions; and 4) a balance between difficulty and skill/time.

It's #4 that answers your question. Dying and losing all progress can work - but only in specific situations. Sometimes, even a small penalty for failure is too much. The key is how the player 'feels' about the difficulty. If it feels 'too hard' for them, they'll quit. If it feels like 'it'll take too long', they'll quit. On the other hand, if they feel it's 'too easy', they'll also quit.

Google 'Why Games Work' - you'll find your answer.

Gigi