Letting go of the checklist: Zombra says you shouldn't do everything in RPGs

[MRY]

MRY, games aren't a collection of toys, rides and knick-knacks for you pick and choose what you want to play with. I think this all comes from the misunderstanding that somehow "side content" means "have nothing to do with the rest of the game". While developers have treated it as such, it shouldn't be, it should still be a part of a larger whole. We don't pay for a ticket to an amusement park or museum, we pay for a whole game which we expect to be at least cohesive. The book analogy still works, like it always has - you don't pay for jumbled chapters and stories that don't have anything to do with one another and you can skip what you don't want. Unless it's The Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs and even that book's anachronistic chapters are still connected to each other.

This is all just raw say-so that makes no sense.

The thing games are least like, or at least ought to be least like, are pre-defined, linear experiences meant to be undertaken the exact same way for every audience member from start to finish. Nothing about a book is like playing a game. There is no interaction, no choosing, and little diversity of activity. The defining quality of a game is that the player is in control (within the confines of the rules); that he chooses (among the options provided by the game); that the game responds to those choices. This essence is not in books. To find it in books requires you to take a view of reading that itself is like what zombra is talking about: in other words, to say that the reader will sometimes skim, sometimes pore over things, sometimes stop to ponder the imagery and implications and sometimes race right past them.

There is no perfect analogy between RPGs and ~RPGs because of that ~. But books are way off. While I think the defining traits of an RPG from a descriptive/cladistic standpoint if we're trying to differentiate between RPGs and adventure games, say, are trivia like HP and XP and GP and equipment, from a broad experiential standpoint the key thing about RPGs is that they present space through which you can move as you choose, encounters that you can approach using different skills, and a vast quantity of content that is locked by your choices (much of this content is trivial -- this combat formation vs. that combat formation, this helmet vs. that helmet -- but some of it is significant).

These factors make the most analogous things not books, which have no space, no choice, no variety, but various real-world spaces, whether we're talking about galleries, theme parks, or even hikes. A hike is a nice example, actually, because often it will have spurs and loops that you can choose to bypass, informational placards you skip, vistas where you can stop to look or not, and an endless depth of detail you can choose to engage with (say, using a book of local wildflowers) or bypass. At the same time, like an RPG, a hike often has a start and an end and a main "line." But if someone said to you, "I've given upon on hikes, there's just too much botany to study, too many placards to read, it just gets too boring," it would be a reasonable response, "You know, you could just skip those." And it would not be a reasonable reply, "But you've just proved hiking is stupid, if you're going to skip the flowers and placards why not just walk on a treadmill or better yet watch Thor: Ragnarok!" Nor would it be a reasonable reply, "Then the Forest Service should just pull up the placards and have only one kind of flower because it's too distracting."

I think we're on the same side even if we're disagreeing on the details -- your vacuuming post that follows is exactly how I feel. Some of what Zombra describes is a way of maximizing pleasure by skipping "generically" worthwhile parts (by which I mean, someone might reasonably like them), but much of the problem is that these parts are not generically worthwhile at all. It's more like saying, "Sure, there's trash all over the hiking trail, but if you train your eye to look past the trash, you can still enjoy the hike." The number of people who can maintain that discipline is slight, so the more reasonable thing is to scream at Forest Service to pick up the trash and to tell people to stop littering.

 

[Roguey]

Then I faced a boss (near the end) that regenerated faster than I could damage it with my woefully underleveled characters who had used every cheap trick in the book to reach that point.

Your characters weren't underleveled, you didn't have the right equipment. Should have paid more attention to what you could buy in stores.

 

[MRY]

The Long Journey Home's designers' take on this, by having a large number of dialogue options but restricting the player to only pick a few per conversation, was expressly intended to make players think carefully about what it was they were doing and not just click through mindlessly down the dialog tree. Turns out some players really didn't like said restrictions, though.

That's a real failure of presentation and design. "This looks just like Star Control's dialogue screen where you could generally ask as much as you wanted. And here are many enticing options! But, hee hee hee, you can actually only pick one and then the rest are gone forever!" Basic human psychology says that as you increase the number of options that the player is forced to give up, he'll feel the pain of loss more than the pleasure of gain. There's no design rule that says you can't (or shouldn't) inflict that pain, but it's a little naive to then be surprised that players are annoyed, particularly when you're inflicting the pain within a preexisting framework that normally yields only pleasure.

I do think that players should be educated that you can't have it all, but you have to be sensitive about your teaching methods.

 

[Lacrymas]

You are pointlessly splitting hairs that also make zero sense. You don't go hiking to read placards, but you do play games to consume the content. Like you read books to consume the content. When that content is bad, which you wouldn't know before consuming it, you are disappointed. That's all there is to it. You can skip whatever you want as part of your glorious and exhilarating new perspective on how games can be played and not 100%'d, just like everyone else has been doing all this time. This whole discussion is ridiculous, what is the point of it?

 

[Roguey]

Why do they feel the need to make barrels, clay jars, literal trash cans, cardboard boxes interact-able and full of garbage loot?

Many players enjoy the act of collecting loot and selling it. Just dropping money isn't good enough to scratch their itch.

PoE's vacuuming is even worse, mobs drop their entire inventories on death which you quickly scoop up to add to the mountainous pile of shit you've collected.

In my second playthrough of PoE, I didn't sell a single item. Didn't negatively affect me.

Edit: the key to understanding RPGs (and quite a few big games in general, especially open worlds) is that they're not designed with the intent that every aspect of it should appeal to a single person. They take a shotgun approach, hoping that you'll find a lot/most of the content/features appealing. If you find yourself forcing yourself doing things you don't enjoy because it's ~there~, well, I dunno, it's kinda like going to an all-you-can-eat buffet and scarfing down food you can't stand because you paid for it.

 

[Lacrymas]

Edit: the key to understanding RPGs (and quite a few big games in general, especially open worlds) is that they're not designed with the intent that every aspect of it should appeal to a single person. They take a shotgun approach, hoping that you'll find a lot/most of the content/features appealing. If you find yourself forcing yourself doing things you don't enjoy because it's ~there~, well, I dunno, it's kinda like going to an all-you-can-eat buffet and scarfing down food you can't stand because you paid for it.

Since this circlejerk has started because of Hong Kong - there are very few aspects of Hong Kong, combat, "exploration" and reading. Reading takes by far the most time. That reading varies significantly in quality, ranging from surprisingly good to suicide-inducingly pointless. So you are supposed to skip all the reading because some of if is bad? You can't selectively skip on your first playthrough because you aren't omniscient and don't know what will be good and what isn't. How is this so hard to understand? When one aspect you enjoy has a sinusoidal curve, what do you do?

 

[Roguey]

Since this circlejerk has started because of Hong Kong - there are very few aspects of Hong Kong, combat, "exploration" and reading. Reading takes by far the most time. That reading varies significantly in quality, ranging from surprisingly good to suicide-inducingly pointless. So you are supposed to skip all the reading because some of if is bad? You can't selectively skip on your first playthrough because you aren't omniscient and don't know what is good and what isn't. How is this so hard to understand? When one aspect you enjoy has a sinusoidal curve, what do you do?

The bulk of the reading in HK was talking to your companions and shopkeepers after every mission. If you find yourself bored by their stories, stop perusing the ones you find boring, continue clicking on the ones you find interesting.

 

[MRY]

you do play games to consume the content. Like you read books to consume the content. When that content is bad, which you wouldn't know before consuming it, you are disappointed. That's all there is to it.

You play games to participate in the content, not to passively consume content "like you read books." The two are not remotely alike. Most games don't involve reading at all. "Games are just like books" is like a crazier version of "games should be like movies." Next, much of what zombra is suggesting skipping is not "bad," but disfavored. Some players love crafting items; some players love exploring deep lore in dialogue trees; some enjoy mastering complex combat systems. Some dislike those systems. Zombra's point is not that games should be chock full of bad gameplay, but that to the extent some aspect of the gameplay is unengaging to a given player, he should try to overcome the completionist/munchkin impulse to engage with it all the same in order to get every +1 possible.

You can skip whatever you want as part of your glorious and exhilarating new perspective on how games can be played and not 100%'d, just like everyone else has been doing all this time. This whole discussion is ridiculous, what is the point of it?

Except that this isn't how everyone else has been playing it, which is the whole point. The majority of players, even on the Codex, if you read their commentary about their experiences with RPGs, feel compelled to dumpster dive if the game hints that in some dumpsters there might be a penny, or a half-eaten BLT, or some shoes that still have a little tread in the sole. They feel compelled to go down every twig of every branch of every dialogue tree on the chance that it will unlock some future content or provide some incremental power-up. They feel compelled to minmax combat stats, even if it means approaching equipment/combat in a way that is fundamentally tedious (like prebuffing with every spell before battle, then resting right afterwards, and repeating ad nauseam).

Zombra's point -- which is obvious but also overlooked -- is that most of these games actually are (un)balanced in such a way that you can play them without engaging in that kind of drudgery and still do the stuff you like without a meaningful limitation. It's a good point, it's just (I think) a somewhat unrealistic one.

 

[Lacrymas]

Roguey, and I guess nobody has told you of the existence of narrative development? Did you stop reading Lord of the Rings because the first pages were all descriptions? Did you stop playing Baldur's Gate because your first fight was against mice?

MRY, I have never said "games are like books". The skipping of content you don't enjoy is what we are talking about here, you can skip pages and chapters in books just like you can skip side quests in RPGs.

 

[Roguey]

Roguey, and I guess nobody has told you of the existence of narrative development? Did you stop reading Lord of the Rings because the first pages were all descriptions? Did you stop playing Baldur's Gate because your first fight was against mice?

Once you're a few conversations deep you should have a pretty good idea whether or not it's worth pursuing to the end.

 

[Lacrymas]

We are going in circles now. We've been over this exact same thing and I don't care to repeat myself again.

 

[Beastro]

There is no interaction, no choosing, and little diversity of activity.

There is when it comes to using ones imagination to conjure up an image of what the book is describing. The mind's ability to really deliver on that is the reason so many have a love/hate relationship with movie of TV adaptions of books, since they can't match the what they imagined from the book.

A lot of video games do operate in the same way, but increasingly they are older games that had to rely on imagination to make up on the technical limitations of the time in which they were made.

I've run into this with the Gold Box games and seeing many epople's comments on them on youtube, how they look on the descriptive dialogue and a bare minimum of what is shown as a lack of something they don't realize needs t be filled in with their mind.

 

[MRY]

I have never said "games are like books".

Imagine if we apply Zombra's logic to any other medium. "Oh, the book is good, just skip 80% of the words, it's fine, don't fall into the Pavlovian trap".

games aren't a collection of toys, rides and knick-knacks for you pick and choose what you want to play with. ... We don't pay for a ticket to an amusement park or museum, we pay for a whole game which we expect to be at least cohesive. The book analogy still works, like it always has

you do play games to consume the content. Like you read books to consume the content.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I swear, your writing always seems to me extremely lucid, but then it turns out I've totally misread it. Mea culpa.

 

[MRY]

There is when it comes to using ones imagination to conjure up an image of what the book is describing. The mind's ability to really deliver on that is the reason so many have a love/hate relationship with movie of TV adaptions of books, since they can't match the what they imagined from the book.

This is very true, but also (I think) tangential to the point. The brainwork of imagining content isn't the same kind of interaction. For instance, both a book and a text adventure involve that brainwork, but the text adventure also has choice.

 

[Lacrymas]

I have never said "games are like books".

Imagine if we apply Zombra's logic to any other medium. "Oh, the book is good, just skip 80% of the words, it's fine, don't fall into the Pavlovian trap".

games aren't a collection of toys, rides and knick-knacks for you pick and choose what you want to play with. ... We don't pay for a ticket to an amusement park or museum, we pay for a whole game which we expect to be at least cohesive. The book analogy still works, like it always has

you do play games to consume the content. Like you read books to consume the content.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I swear, your writing always seems to me extremely lucid, but then it turns out I've totally misread it. Mea culpa.

How does this say "games are like books"? It says "you can skip content in books (or movies, or whatever, you decided that "book" is the key word here, good luck fast forwarding a movie in a cinema, though) just like you can skip content in games".

 

[Beastro]

Your advice doesn't work for the things involved. Experience is one of the goals of the game. There's no way to know those little awards are going to add to squat to 20 EXPs later on. Further, one of the dialogues unlocks the good ending of the game. If that isn't a reason to edit this dialogue, nothing can possibly be.

In most games I'd say that's a failure of properly tune difficulty to itemization and level progression.

The best example that comes to mind are elixers in Final Fantasy games and how the vast majority collected are not used by most players because they are always holding onto them for when they really need them, and since they're playing a FF game, they almost never do.

That was the neat thing running into the optional Dragon Dungeon in FFIIIs GBA port and it's difficuly, at least at first, where my guys were getting beat down fast and I actually had use for those things to keep my MP focused on DPS.

 

[MRY]

How does this say "games are like books"? It says "you can skip content in books (or movies, or whatever, you decided that "book" is the key word here, good luck fast forwarding a movie in a cinema, though) just like you can skip content in games".

you do play games to consume the content. Like you read books to consume the content.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Lacrymas]

You seem to have a perverse attachment to semantics, but since you are a lawyer I'm not surprised. You do consume content in games, saying that you "participate in it" instead of consuming sounds like a loophole you'd use in a courtroom. How "actively" or "passively" you consume it hardly makes a difference to the content.

 

[MRY]

Lacrymas: I have never said "games are like books".
MRY: Here are three places you said exactly that.
Lacrymas: You seem to have a perverse attachment to semantics.

Look, it's pretty simple. Either books are like games, and therefore people should approach consuming them the same way, or they aren't, and they shouldn't. You have said the former, and it's false. Others, including me, have said the latter, and that's true. Books and games are not alike, and they are different in exactly the way that is relevant here: the relationship between the work's content and its audience.

A reader of a book is expected to start on the first page, end on the last page, and go through all the fixed, linear, and similar content in between. A player of a game is expected to start at the starting point and pursue his own route through the variable and diverse content of the game, reaching one of many different endings (some as pedestrian as simply dying), perhaps repeating some of the content and inevitably avoiding other content. A reader is expected to receive the text and interpret it, but not to change the text. If you ask two readers to describe in excruciating detail a book that they read, they might differ in how they understood the content, but they would explicate the same content (to the extent their basic comprehension and memory held up). If you ask two player to describe in excruciating detail a game they played from start to finish, there would be significant differences in the content they explicated. The broad outlines will be similar (because the game's rules and overall story arc are fixed) but the specifics will differ enormously. In a narrative game, the player is expected both to shape the narrative's content and to interpret that content.

Because players and readers engage with the "content" in totally different ways -- with the player being required to choose which content he wishes to experience (even as simple as which path to walk through a room), and with that content always varying from player to player -- it is nonsensical to say that a player who chooses to skip content he is not enjoying in a game is like a reader who is skipping content he is not enjoying in a book. The reader who skips breaks the book. The player who does what Zombra describes doesn't break the game at all because a player is always making choices and avoiding content. Zombra's point is that the standard by which he makes that choice shouldn't be "what is most likely to max my stats or exhaust maximal content" but instead should be "what am I going to enjoy most."

Bottom line is that it is simply false to say that "you play games to consume the content like you read books to consume the content." Only at a level of meaningless tautology ("a person does a thing to go through the doing of the thing") could you equate the two. The premise of the statement, a false premise, is that "games are like books"; since you now insist that you think they're totally different, you're conceding you're wrong. As you should. The way you consume the content is not the same. The content is not the same. And the way in which they are different is in the very aspect that relates to Zombra's point.

If you think playing a game should be more like reading a book than going to a gallery, a theme park, an obstacle course, or a hike, you're on the wrong side of design. Fortunately for you, the entire industry is removing gameplay to cater to people who want semi-interactive books and movies!

--EDIT--

Just to be clear, I really do think you write and analyze lucidly, and I really am baffled when you say that I'm utterly misunderstanding you. Given the high regard I have for your smarts, I suspect this is more a Lore fail on my end than a Speech fail on yours.

 

[Beastro]

Either that OR give alternative rewards for failed skill checks. Like more experience in that skill than what you'd gain by succeeding. Ok you failed to unlock that chest but you became better at unlocking shit in the future. Basically give incentive to continue even if you miss/fail some stuff

This is something that bothers me in game, when you get more exp or a bigger skill increase for successfully passing a check when you simply learn more from failure and that is why it is such a necessary thing to life, even if we may hate its guts.

 

[Roguey]

If RPGs are comparable to books, they're more akin to a collection of serial fiction than novels. One can easily skip a boring Sherlock Holmes or Conan or Fafhrd and Gray Mouster and go on to the next one.

 

[Lhynn]

If RPGs are comparable to books

They arent.

 

[Tigranes]

Oh great the 'are rpgs like books/film/art/taking a dump' spiel almost as bad is 'what is rpg'

 

[Roguey]

If RPGs are comparable to books

They arent.

Lacrymas is the one going on about how skipping content in a RPG is like skipping chapters in a book or scenes in a movie when they don't share the same narrative structure.

 

[Lhynn]

Lacrymas doesnt know what the hell hes talking about.

All you need to know is that games are there to be beaten, and purposely playing like shit makes you a loser.
Anyone that doesnt share my view on this particular thing should stick to reading books or watching movies, because they are actively ruining my hobby with their retarded notions. id tell them to go download a VN or play a point and click adventure.

Want to play an RPG where every sidequest is skippable and you can use even the most gimp weapon in the game and still do fine? Then you want to be playing skyrim. For the rest of us exploring content and mastering mechanics is an important part of the experience, especially considering theres no DM that can just make new content up on the fly.