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Sunday, April 17, 2022
Succeeding backwards
One of the advantages of board games over computer games is that a board game (without using an app) can't hide its game mechanics. As it is you who has to execute the game mechanics, you will always see what exactly is going on. And thus it was interesting to see that Roll Player Adventures not only has frequent uses of "failing forward" mechanics, where the story at least continues if you fail combat or skill checks, or you might even get extra rewards on failing; it also has what I would call "succeeding backwards" mechanics, where if you do exceptionally well in combat, you will lose progress.
For example, at the end of adventure 10 (the penultimate adventure in the campaign), you will have to fight a rather powerful monster. The "normal" outcome of the fight is to win it, but only after 2 or 3 rounds of combat. In that case the story simply continues. If you are defeated, the story also continues, but you will get additional stat bonuses and an increase in combat dice limit. But if you kill that monster in a single turn, your combat dice limit and bonus play limit will be reduced. In other words, if you are too weak, you will get a boost, but if you are too strong, the game will make you weaker.
From a game design point of view, the interest of such game mechanics are obvious: That fight is a check whether you are too weak, just right, or too strong for the next adventure, with the consequences trying to some degree to fix the situation towards "just right", for maximum enjoyment of the end. However, the "succeeding backwards" part is not something that games usually do. Many games don't even have fail forward mechanics. If in Elden Ring you can't beat Margit at the level that you are, the game expects you to turn back and level some more, until you can beat him. But Elden Ring certainly doesn't prevent you from completely overleveling content.
The usual video game mechanic is that you are rewarded for success, and punished for failure. The obvious problem with that mechanic is that it can snowball if the game has some sort of campaign without a possibility to catch up. I have played some games that were series of tactical battles with only a main campaign and no optional side battles or random battles. If in such a game your units get "veteran status" and other rewards for surviving, while dead units need to be replaced by expensive and inexperienced troops, it is easy to see how a good start will make that game easier and easier, while bad luck or error committed in the early game can lead to a situation where the game is basically unwinnable later.
Getting progress taken away from you because you are too strong is something that many players would find inacceptable. So perhaps the best solution is the one that a good DM would apply to Dungeons & Dragons campaign: If your players turn out to be exceptionally strong, make the enemies stronger than originally foreseen; if your players made a bunch of "fun" characters for roleplaying, but not very good at combat, make the enemies weaker. However, some attempts of that in computer games have been too simplistic, where the enemies simply scale with your level to a point where leveling loses all interest. And then, some people like to grind early in a game in order to be able to roflstomp the rest.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:41 AM Permanent Link
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Punishment for failure seems a bit problematic, unless there is some reward (maybe a special victory condition, but preferably something more tangible) going along with it. Cutting your character stats rather than increasing the monsters' seems particularly on the nose. Though I can see the point in it - if the characters start with bonus resources they will only need if they imperfectly execute combat, you might get better gameplay by taking those away from the best players, and you don't have to balance a harder encounter.
I guess an alternative might be to take a tip from computer games and put in difficulty levels (I'm sure some board games probably do this, but it doesn't seem to be the norm from what I read.)
I guess an alternative might be to take a tip from computer games and put in difficulty levels (I'm sure some board games probably do this, but it doesn't seem to be the norm from what I read.)
Disco Elysium is the only game I can remember that handled failure really well. There are even some instances of failed dice rolls being the better outcome. Games often just go with binary fail/succeed states or make both options lead to the same outcome which is worse in my opinion.
Eldenring does allow the player to over level about 90% of the content...and then you make it to the last three zones and enemy health and damage goes through the roof. It's been very interesting seeing the reaction of first timers when they get to the end game. Many people are disliking that last 10% of Eldenring due to how hard it is compared to the rest of the game.
Eldenring does allow the player to over level about 90% of the content...and then you make it to the last three zones and enemy health and damage goes through the roof. It's been very interesting seeing the reaction of first timers when they get to the end game. Many people are disliking that last 10% of Eldenring due to how hard it is compared to the rest of the game.
I thought it was pretty neat that Project Gorgon had a "dying well" skill. I can think of a fair few games where you get to see a prison level you would not experience otherwise if you get defeated.
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