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Thursday, February 20, 2020
Playing the game wrong
The comment of Random_Phobosis on my previous post probably necessitates a whole blog post. Random_Phobosis says that if you lose a game, it is the developers' way of telling you that you are playing it wrong. And there are so many levels on which I disagree with that statement. What the fuck does "playing it wrong" even mean?
"Playing", by definition, is doing something for fun. Having fun playing is important, winning however isn't. "Winning" is a completely different concept, more at home in the domain of sports and competition than in the domain of games and playing. Now for some forms of play, competition might still be an important part. But that necessitates certain conditions of balance and fairness, which is why Pay2Win tends to upset people. In most single-player games, the conditions of balance and fairness are not given. Basically AI is underdeveloped in most games, and then some sort of pseudo-balance is simulated by the computer cheating, or play just being completely asymmetrical. That can lead to a form of pseudo-competition, where winning depends on doing exactly what the developers arbitrarily scripted, regardless of whether that makes any sense.
Playing a game exactly like the developers intended is not necessarily the most fun. I remember a lot of fun I had in World of Warcraft when I had a new character on a new server making money by sneaking into far too high level zones and fishing. And sometimes, playing a game like the developers intended feels "wrong". I mentioned Valkyria Chronicles on this blog, where actually fighting a battle using all your units gives you a less good reward than abusing a single scout to bypass the battle. Or Phoenix Point, where accepting every opportunity of battle, e.g. scavenging missions, strengthens the aliens more than your team, making you lose the strategic game. It is pretty safe to assume that an average player who picks up a game like Valkyria Chronicles or Phoenix Point does so because he would like to play tactical battles. The idea that to win on the strategic level you need to avoid those tactical battles is counter-intuitive. Under the very narrow definition that "playing it wrong" means playing it in exactly the way that the developers want you to play, as weird as that might be, the typical player will automatically play certain games wrong. He would need to get information from other sources, like forums or Reddit or YouTube, that tells him what "playing it right" means under this narrow definition.
Me, I don't call that "playing it wrong", I call that "designed badly". Ideally a game should be playable intuitively. If for some specific reason something less intuitive is required of the player, the game should make that very clear to him. A game design in which the intuitive way to play is designed to lead the player astray, and the "right" way to play needs a lot of trial and error, or outside information, is just not a good game.
On the other side, I have played some very good games, which could be completed by playing them in the most obvious way, but also offered you the possibility to play them in more complicated and different ways, e.g. sneaking past enemies instead of killing them, and the game would still work. That is good game design. The more options work, the better. The people who like to optimize and discuss the very best strategy on the internet can still do so, but that one "secret optimal strategy" shouldn't be the only way you can achieve a positive ending in a game. Having to follow an invisible series of steps and being punished for not knowing those steps isn't fun, except for a bunch of masochist gamers. Being able to try different things and see how they all work in slightly different ways, without being punished for it, is fun.
"Playing", by definition, is doing something for fun. Having fun playing is important, winning however isn't. "Winning" is a completely different concept, more at home in the domain of sports and competition than in the domain of games and playing. Now for some forms of play, competition might still be an important part. But that necessitates certain conditions of balance and fairness, which is why Pay2Win tends to upset people. In most single-player games, the conditions of balance and fairness are not given. Basically AI is underdeveloped in most games, and then some sort of pseudo-balance is simulated by the computer cheating, or play just being completely asymmetrical. That can lead to a form of pseudo-competition, where winning depends on doing exactly what the developers arbitrarily scripted, regardless of whether that makes any sense.
Playing a game exactly like the developers intended is not necessarily the most fun. I remember a lot of fun I had in World of Warcraft when I had a new character on a new server making money by sneaking into far too high level zones and fishing. And sometimes, playing a game like the developers intended feels "wrong". I mentioned Valkyria Chronicles on this blog, where actually fighting a battle using all your units gives you a less good reward than abusing a single scout to bypass the battle. Or Phoenix Point, where accepting every opportunity of battle, e.g. scavenging missions, strengthens the aliens more than your team, making you lose the strategic game. It is pretty safe to assume that an average player who picks up a game like Valkyria Chronicles or Phoenix Point does so because he would like to play tactical battles. The idea that to win on the strategic level you need to avoid those tactical battles is counter-intuitive. Under the very narrow definition that "playing it wrong" means playing it in exactly the way that the developers want you to play, as weird as that might be, the typical player will automatically play certain games wrong. He would need to get information from other sources, like forums or Reddit or YouTube, that tells him what "playing it right" means under this narrow definition.
Me, I don't call that "playing it wrong", I call that "designed badly". Ideally a game should be playable intuitively. If for some specific reason something less intuitive is required of the player, the game should make that very clear to him. A game design in which the intuitive way to play is designed to lead the player astray, and the "right" way to play needs a lot of trial and error, or outside information, is just not a good game.
On the other side, I have played some very good games, which could be completed by playing them in the most obvious way, but also offered you the possibility to play them in more complicated and different ways, e.g. sneaking past enemies instead of killing them, and the game would still work. That is good game design. The more options work, the better. The people who like to optimize and discuss the very best strategy on the internet can still do so, but that one "secret optimal strategy" shouldn't be the only way you can achieve a positive ending in a game. Having to follow an invisible series of steps and being punished for not knowing those steps isn't fun, except for a bunch of masochist gamers. Being able to try different things and see how they all work in slightly different ways, without being punished for it, is fun.
- posted by Tobold @ 11:00 AM Permanent Link
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There’s a Youtube channel called “Let’s Game It Out” who specializes in the absolute antithesis of playing a game “correctly.” It is 100% delightful chaos. He puts in as much, if not more, hard work and effort as someone trying to optimize, and demonstrates through example that you can have as much fun, if not more, doing things “wrong” or playing to the beat of a different drum and creating your own goals. It is game as “toy” and not game as “boundaried competition.”
I think that ideally, the optimal play should always be the most fun one. The only reason for win and loss states to exist is to guide the players from unfun to fun activity.
So, I agree with you that, generally, if you don't find the optimal route fun, it's a flaw of design. And yes, flawed design can sometimes force the players into the role of co-designers, so they modify rules (by cheating or creating constraints, for example) to improve the resulting design.
Up until this point I think we agree, but there's a catch. To be an effective co-designer, you have to know the original design intent, otherwise you might misinterpret crucial parts of the system and actually make the game less fun.
For example, when I was a kid, I once agreed to play some fighting game without throws, because "throws are cheap" and apparently ruining the fun of the game. This was us missing the rock-papers-scissors mindgame part of the game, which is actually a cornerstone of design. So, we had some fun, but we also played the game completely wrong and robbed ourselves of the deeper parts of the game by basically banning ourselves from ever exploring it.
As for Phoenix Point, it appears to me that it was made for tastes of Long War crowd, which is quite different from vanilla XCOM playerbase. At least, most my buddies that like Long War seem to get this game and enojy the parts that I consider to be downsides. So, my conclusion was that game design was actually good (for its intended audience, that is), and that it might be me who doesn't understand the game's appeal and focus. Or maybe I'm just not Phoenix Point's target audience in the first place.
Now, being unclear, obscure and hard to get is also a flaw of design, of course. But even here I'm not sure if that's Phoenix Point is being obscure, or me stubbornly clinging to XCOM playing habits and ignoring all the other possibilities.
So, I agree with you that, generally, if you don't find the optimal route fun, it's a flaw of design. And yes, flawed design can sometimes force the players into the role of co-designers, so they modify rules (by cheating or creating constraints, for example) to improve the resulting design.
Up until this point I think we agree, but there's a catch. To be an effective co-designer, you have to know the original design intent, otherwise you might misinterpret crucial parts of the system and actually make the game less fun.
For example, when I was a kid, I once agreed to play some fighting game without throws, because "throws are cheap" and apparently ruining the fun of the game. This was us missing the rock-papers-scissors mindgame part of the game, which is actually a cornerstone of design. So, we had some fun, but we also played the game completely wrong and robbed ourselves of the deeper parts of the game by basically banning ourselves from ever exploring it.
As for Phoenix Point, it appears to me that it was made for tastes of Long War crowd, which is quite different from vanilla XCOM playerbase. At least, most my buddies that like Long War seem to get this game and enojy the parts that I consider to be downsides. So, my conclusion was that game design was actually good (for its intended audience, that is), and that it might be me who doesn't understand the game's appeal and focus. Or maybe I'm just not Phoenix Point's target audience in the first place.
Now, being unclear, obscure and hard to get is also a flaw of design, of course. But even here I'm not sure if that's Phoenix Point is being obscure, or me stubbornly clinging to XCOM playing habits and ignoring all the other possibilities.
I would question the wisdom of spending millions to make a game that specifically caters to a sub-set of people who enjoyed a particular mod of a particular game. Although of course DotA and auto-chess prove that this isn’t a strict rule.
For Phoenix Point in particular, I simply don’t see why we couldn’t have had both. It would have been extremely easy to have a game mode in which the aliens don’t evolve so quickly, and an average player with no external information would be likely to win the game on the first try. Which, at least for me, is the definition of an “easy” difficulty setting. I don’t really see the point of games where on easy difficulty you are still expected to fail repeatedly, until you learn or read what the game actually wants you to do.
The Long War is great as an option, but not necessarily good as only possible game mode other than cheating.
For Phoenix Point in particular, I simply don’t see why we couldn’t have had both. It would have been extremely easy to have a game mode in which the aliens don’t evolve so quickly, and an average player with no external information would be likely to win the game on the first try. Which, at least for me, is the definition of an “easy” difficulty setting. I don’t really see the point of games where on easy difficulty you are still expected to fail repeatedly, until you learn or read what the game actually wants you to do.
The Long War is great as an option, but not necessarily good as only possible game mode other than cheating.
It would also have been very easy in Phoenix to include text or something that states "every time we defeat the aliens, they grow stronger, so we need to pick our battles". Now there is a justifiable in-game reason for the system, rather than being obscure and punishing people for playing the way the would naturally expect a game to work.
Either way, from your posts Phoenix just sounds like a flawed version of XCOM, which isn't that uncommon when fan projects try to 'improve' a game and end up making it worse overall. Happens all the time with mods to many games. This just became a full game that you buy, rather than a free mod you download and mess around with.
Either way, from your posts Phoenix just sounds like a flawed version of XCOM, which isn't that uncommon when fan projects try to 'improve' a game and end up making it worse overall. Happens all the time with mods to many games. This just became a full game that you buy, rather than a free mod you download and mess around with.
This issue seems to happen very often in indie games. The game starts out with lots of cool possibilities but the viable subset of possibilities becomes narrower and narrower as the game progresses until you are left with only one viable strategy for completing the game.
I imagine it is human nature for indie developers to start off thinking that their magnum opus can be all things to all players but as development progresses and the realities of time and money kick in the scope has to narrow.
It would be interesting to explore whether or not the final "one viable strategy" is more likely to be the way the devs themselves like to play or is it just whatever quick fix allows them to finally get the game finished and ship it.
I imagine it is human nature for indie developers to start off thinking that their magnum opus can be all things to all players but as development progresses and the realities of time and money kick in the scope has to narrow.
It would be interesting to explore whether or not the final "one viable strategy" is more likely to be the way the devs themselves like to play or is it just whatever quick fix allows them to finally get the game finished and ship it.
Good game design does indeed lead players towards certain play styles. A recent interview by NoClip with one of the creators of Doom 2016 touched on this.
He talked about how some people found the game repetitive because they weren't playing the game as the developers intended. Instead of using their vast array of weapons or abilities or countering enemies certain enemies with certain weapons they noticed some players relying on one weapon the whole game.
Instead of saying those players played wrong, he called it a failure of their design. They didn't give players enough reason to not just brute force the game by just running at everything and shooting it point blank with the Super Shotgun.
He goes on to explain how in their upcoming game they addressed this by making the enemies have abilities that actually give players a reason to switch weapons.
He talked about how some people found the game repetitive because they weren't playing the game as the developers intended. Instead of using their vast array of weapons or abilities or countering enemies certain enemies with certain weapons they noticed some players relying on one weapon the whole game.
Instead of saying those players played wrong, he called it a failure of their design. They didn't give players enough reason to not just brute force the game by just running at everything and shooting it point blank with the Super Shotgun.
He goes on to explain how in their upcoming game they addressed this by making the enemies have abilities that actually give players a reason to switch weapons.
"You are playing it wrong" is almost always poor game design. It is only excusable if:
a) The game lets you know that what you are doing wrong.
b) There is a viable option to revert once it is obvious that you have diverged from the expected path. Undoing the last mission is acceptable. Finding out that your irredeemable error was 10 hours ago is not.
It sounds as though Phoenix Point could do a soft reset, maybe triggering sabotage missions if you take too many scavenger missions. Sort of an "After X scavenger missions create very hard mission to destroy an enemy strategic hub. (Removes X/2 missions worth of enemy progression)."
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a) The game lets you know that what you are doing wrong.
b) There is a viable option to revert once it is obvious that you have diverged from the expected path. Undoing the last mission is acceptable. Finding out that your irredeemable error was 10 hours ago is not.
It sounds as though Phoenix Point could do a soft reset, maybe triggering sabotage missions if you take too many scavenger missions. Sort of an "After X scavenger missions create very hard mission to destroy an enemy strategic hub. (Removes X/2 missions worth of enemy progression)."
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