Editorial Challenge vs Frustration: Bloggin' on Time Limits

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Chris Avellone

In this brief blog post MCA ponders how to make time-limits more welcoming.

From a gamemaster/game designer perspective, the idea of time limits is appealing. It creates pressure, and it creates an urgency for the player that’s hard to beat.

In Fallout 1, the skill system and the plot was built around the design that you only had a certain number of days to find the water chip for your vault and then defeat the mutant army or game over. If you don’t recall that, then chances are you played it with the patch that removed that design element, as the mutant-hunting-your-Vault-down-time-limit was patched out of the game in 1.1 because of the outcry.

So I love time limits. In Fallout 1, it was appropriate because:

- It reinforced the urgency and pressure of saving your Vault.
- It reinforced the brutal nature of the world you were in.
- It made time-usage skills more risky for players to use. Sure, Doctor was helpful, but you had to be careful because it could consume a lot of time if used repeatedly.

Players reacted negatively because:

- The time limit was unforgiving.
- It prevented them from exploring areas at their leisure, which undermined the non-linearity of the game – suddenly you didn’t want to go everywhere and explore everything, because the clock was ticking.
- It couldn’t be reset/extended beyond the time limit except in a few places in the game, and only a finite number of times.

 

[mbpopolano24]

Sure, I enjoy time limits as I enjoy check-point saves. My ideal game? A 10 hrs time limit, single save (check points only of course), jumping platforms all over the place (like 10 in a row and if you miss a jump you have to start over the game), and of course internet connection required at all time. Instant classics!

 

[Carrion]

Time limits can be good if used properly, and Fallout did just that. Only resting and travelling really wasted time, so even though the sense of urgency was there, you never felt like you had to hurry through the game. You could spend an hour or two searching every house, talking to everyone and doing all kinds of pointless stuff and it wouldn't matter one bit because that would only mean losing a couple of in-game hours in a game that gives you a few months to fulfill your objective. Only when you were healing yourself, travelling or going through surgical operations you really had to think about how to use your time effectively. This is something I wouldn't mind seeing more. Maybe a "save on rest" system combined with a vague Fallout-like time limit could also discourage save scumming better than forced checkpoints or other similar crap? Not to mention how much it could balance certain D&D games where you can memorize new spells after every fight.

Of course, a badly implemented time limit can fuck up the whole game. I hate having to rush through things or rely on metaknowledge to avoid getting screwed in a game. I can't really think of any RPGs where that would be the case, though.

 

[Goral]

I think that time limits add a sense of uncertainty to the game experience and make people to use their heads and actually think before they do something stupid and waste time. Games like these don't bore as easily as games where you can do absolutely everything in one play-through (e.g. Bethesda games). In Fallout 1 you couldn't just waste time and explore the map for as long as you liked so with every new play-through you could find something new. Personally I would prefer that Wasteland 2 had time limit as a default. Modders would get rid of it anyway but I think that overall it would add to the game's longevity.

 

[DraQ]

As a player I hate time limits with a burning passion. The thing is that sometimes they are simply indispensable if you don't want to end up with a fucking Kvatch.

Still, even necessary time limits have a couple of problems:

1. Hard time limits - if time limit is hard, binary mechanics (you either fit within or not), then player is effectively encouraged to take as much time as possible and come as close as possible to this limit without exceeding it. It's easy to see how it's a recipe for disaster. An obvious solution is to make time limit long enough to not limit player's access to content, but in such case why have a time limit at all if it's not going to affect the player?
A decent solution would be a soft time limit, where approaching time limit slowly gets more and more disadvantageous, encouraging player to not take their sweet time.

2. Long term time limits - a long term time limit is generally worse for gameplay than short term ones because if you actually run into it, you can't really do anything about it by reloading, which means that player can irreparably screw themselves long before they actually know it, without any grossly stupid actions on their part.
A good solution would be to expand the game in a way that exceeding such a long-term time limit never leads to game over, even if it's undesirable.
Short term time limits are easier to manage, because their consequences are more immediate. They are also more vital for verisimilitude where they apply.

3. Inflexibility - a time limit has no way of determining whether a player is taking their sweet time or genuinely struggling to not exceed it. In an RPG with multitude of builds and approaches that can't be tested exhaustively this becomes a balance problem. A unique, if cheatish way of solving 1. and 3. that is unique to RPGs would be tying unwelcome consequences of approaching time limit with measures of character progression (level, max achieved wealth, etc.), rather than time. Those measures are monotonic in regards to time so they can be substituted for it when implementing soft time limit with the intention of discouraging player from screwing around. This approach is also one of few legitimate uses of leveling and level scaling. You just need a somewhat accurate power gauge encompassing every tactics that makes player take their sweet time to cheese (past) something.


Now, the good side of time limits are as follows:

a) they help verisimilitude in emergency situations of various scope.

b) they relax requirement for realistic gameworld reactivity and make mechanical weaknesses harder to exploit. (For example forcing player to flee using sheer enemy numbers may not work in certain circumstances (like player being Über, or exploiting AI loopholes), but setting building on fire and making it collapse on you if you take your sweet time will always work).

If game includes a lot of time compressed activities (resting, healing, travel), then even generous time limit may help curb their use, as Carrion noticed.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

The time limit in Fallout 1 really added a lot to the game, I wish more games would use them.

 

[G.O.D]

It never bothered me in Fallout. I too liked it in Fallout, mainly for the re-play value.
With the Water Merchants adding 100 days i never had trouble anyway.
And the Mutant threat timelimit i never did encounter.. and i'm pretty sure i played it un-patched the first time i played Fallout.

 

[OSK]

I don't like time limits that only result in a game over screen.

Exile 3 had a system where if you took your time addressing the monster plagues, the world would become more dangerous and cities and forts would be overrun and turned into ruins. This created a sense of urgency, punished the player for taking too long, but never made the game impossible to finish.

 

[ChristofferC]

I hate, no HATE, no *HATE* time limits in games. I want to be able to relax and take my time.

 

[DraQ]

I hate, no HATE, no *HATE* time limits in games. I want to be able to relax and take my time.

I do too, but what if they make sense in the context?
What if their absence would fundamentally break the gameworld logic?

 

[hiver]

The biggest problem with TIME LIMIT in Fallout was that it meant GAME OVER.
If you could play on, in the world changed by the consequences of your actions then it would be a totally different conundrum to ponder.
The Vault was lost so... what? You still had the master and mutants to take care of, other communities to influence... amirite?

For me, much bigger problem was that i couldnt turn sides and play for master, or muties and cause them to rebel against the master.
And became a new master... muehehehe... or just disband the whole movement... or... become a super mutant... or...whatever.
To be sure - that was the fault of publisher imposed constraints.
Still...



Also Chris... would you guys mind stopping to listen the loudest yelling retards?
You will? ok,..Thanx, man.



The other usual mistake in these things is that somehow, for some unclear arcane reasons, everyone assumes it has to be some sort of extreme measure. Like the game WITH time limits will have all quests limited by time...?
Or the game without them wont have ANY AT ALL.

Applied where logic and common sense would expect them but without GAME OVER consequence, if that is not absolutely demanded by logic and common sense.... will work just fine and make the game better.

 

[waywardOne]

I like two types of time limits in certain genres, particularly RPGs.

One is what I'll call the main plot time limit. Whether it's BG2 or Oblivion, there's some bad shit going on and the longer you wait to solve it should make things more difficult to fix. Neither game does anything like this. Because it is the game's raison d'etre, so to speak, the difficulty would never increase to impossibility, but it might get to the point where every resource you possess becomes less valuable if it's not used in furtherance of the main plot, where side quests have increasingly diminishing returns. Sadly, no dev is either creative or brave enough to do this with a main quest anymore, but I can dream.

The other is simply the basic timed (side) quest: you've got X hours/days to complete some task or other. This isn't uncommon but should be de rigeur for all (non-main) quests in a game. If a farmer is asking you to clear out a tribe of goblins, he really can't afford to have you fuck around for a month. Do it in a timely fashion and get paid; don't and any number of things could happen: he starves and his sons hunt you down, or another group of adventurers does it, or the success of the goblins encourages more bad guys to move in.

 

[G.O.D]

New Vegas would benefit from some sort of time limit, IMO.
NPCs talk about shit hitting the fan between NCR and the Legion in the near future, and the coming of the Legate, without anything significant actually happening.
There is no urgency, and you can go through every single quest there is, and take all the time you like.
Which feels kind of rediculous with the vibe the devs tried to create.

Same can be said for the ES series.

But yes, a time limit can harm a game alot, i have no idea what the best method is to implement it, but like i said, i was OK with it in Fallout 1.
It worked for that game.

 

[commie]

Fallout's time limit was a false limit. I took my time and explored almost everything I could in my first playthrough and made it reasonably easily. There WAS a FEELING of impending catastrophe but it was very hard to fail. There certainly wasn't so much content in the game that you needed to be able to explore indefinitely. Thus it worked well at giving a sense of urgency without actually punishing the player. Besides, you were tasked with finding the water chip, not to just go off and randomly explore. I bet most of the whining about it came in replays when people wanted to do just that: go off and just look around randomly in different ways. Maybe rather than just be disabled like in a patch, there should be an option available in a replay to turn the time limit off.

 

[sea]

I think brief time limits for specific challenges are the way to go, and there should never be an absolute failure state attached. An easy example is a mini-game inside a mini-game collection like Mario Party - the timer creates tension, yes, but even if you fail, there's plenty more chances to make it up because that challenge was one of many you'll be taking on. When you do eventually lose the game, it feels fair because your failure is a result of repeat losses, not one.

In an RPG context, the same approach works fine - give the player a limited time to accomplish an objective, perhaps with negative ramifications for failure, but allow the game to continue. Fallout would have actually worked with this; its open-world nature meant that the player could still win without ever saving Vault 13, so why not simply give the player a different ending if the Water Chip is never recovered? There's a story consequence (your friends all die), and a gameplay consequence (less direction/info on taking out the Master), and none of it would feel especially unfair either.

Perhaps saving Vault 13 could have been a more multi-part objective with a mix of different limitations, hard and soft. Multiple outcomes with a sort of granularity in success would have also been just as fair. For example, perhaps you side with the rebels and convince them to open up to the Wasteland, saving the Vault but ruining its safety and lifestyle. The details of course require tweaking to make everything interact and operate smoothly (which endings trump which?) but you get the idea.

As Chris brought up, System Shock 2 had time limits attached to inventory items (upgrades), and I think this is also a much more fair sort of limit to include in a game. While charging stations were fairly plentiful (at least one per deck of the ship) it still provided benefits while also encouraging the player to make ideal use of time. It's a timer, yes, but it's disguised both in gameplay and narrative. In that sense, a game like Fallout also has a timer - ammunition - but you can also use others like food supplies to accomplish the same. Instead of an annoyance, it becomes a game mechanic for the player to consider.

The only real issue here is development time and priorities. I can appreciate the want to tell a specific story and limiting the player's choices because of it, just as I can also appreciate that implementing so many different outcomes may not be feasible for most games. Ultimately the question isn't just how to implement time limits in a fair and effective way, but whether it's feasible. Doing it mechanically is probably the best bet when budget is a concern - building unique situations and outcomes for different possibilities is tough, but expressing that same thing as a game system is comparatively much less work.

 

[Spectacle]

New Vegas would benefit from some sort of time limit, IMO.
NPCs talk about shit hitting the fan between NCR and the Legion in the near future, and the coming of the Legate, without anything significant actually happening.
There is no urgency, and you can go through every single quest there is, and take all the time you like.
Which feels kind of rediculous with the vibe the devs tried to create.

I didn't really feel that way with New Vegas. Sure, the situation between the NCR and the legion is a powder keg waiting to blow, but it's not going to blow without a spark. Both sides are waiting for the other to make a move until the player pushes them into action.

 

[G.O.D]

In an RPG context, the same approach works fine - give the player a limited time to accomplish an objective, perhaps with negative ramifications for failure, but allow the game to continue. Fallout would have actually worked as a result; its open-world nature meant that the player could still win without ever saving Vault 13, so why not simply give the player a different ending if the Water Chip is never recovered? There's a story consequence (your friends all die), and a gameplay consequence (less direction/info on taking out the Master), and none of it would feel especially unfair either.

You are right, i agree.
The game should track the objectives you completed succesfully (or failed for that matter) if it uses a time limit and adjust the endings based on that record.
Simple and effective.

 

[G.O.D]

New Vegas would benefit from some sort of time limit, IMO.
NPCs talk about shit hitting the fan between NCR and the Legion in the near future, and the coming of the Legate, without anything significant actually happening.
There is no urgency, and you can go through every single quest there is, and take all the time you like.
Which feels kind of rediculous with the vibe the devs tried to create.

I didn't really feel that way with New Vegas. Sure, the situation between the NCR and the legion is a powder keg waiting to blow, but it's not going to blow without a spark. Both sides are waiting for the other to make a move until the player pushes them into action.

To me it felt more like the NCR being in a defensive position, and the Legion making final preparations (and with the coming of the Legate) to push the NCR out for good, wether the player got involved or not.

EDIT:

By that i didn't mean to downplay the delivery of the Platinum Chip to either side, but the Legion overall gives the impression that SOON, they will make their move and assault the NCR, and thus end the stalemate.

 

[hiver]

I would not agree that doing the whole game time limits through mechanics is the right option.
In fact, it is the worst.

First - it imposes time limits where, reasonably, there should not be any.
Second - It creates content of lesser quality and believability.

Doing it mechanically is probably the best bet when budget is a concern - building unique situations and outcomes for different possibilities is tough, but expressing that same thing as a game system is comparatively much less work.

This issue is similar to the issue of enemy encounter design, or enemy leveling.
If you do it through overarching mechanics - like level scaling - you end up with shit.
If you do it by hand... which is harder - and it god damn makes sense that a better option is harder - then you get great content.

Of course, theoretically there could be some good mechanical blah, blah, fucking blah... (i mean this generally speaking only)



Time limits should NOT be applied to whole of the game and then have devs spend time figuring out how to implement bloody time limit and some sort of consequence into every single quest. Thus limiting their time spent on making good quests.
Apply it only where necessary.

Hard time limits - Hostage situation or something like that.
A deck of a spaceship where air is running out. (and there is no space suits or ways to plug the leaks).
If there are, then... its a soft time limit.

Avoiding time limited quests that necessarily mean the players death - i.e. GAME OVER - instead of preferring to design quests so the player can play on but with consequences.
Diverse consequences. Then later on, have a few very important quests that branch the players path more significantly.

Ordinary common sense time limit quests:
- You didnt save that hostage? Now you have his or hers relatives and family out for you, reputation drop etc.

- Air running out of one space ship deck? And you didnt save all those people you interacted with previously? But you found a suit and maybe fought for it? Well now you can drift through that section while dessicated bodies bump in you.

 

[Irxy]

My 1st fallout playthrough ended 2 squares before mutant base due to time limit, now that was frustrating.
I generally hate all kinds of time limits, they just annoy me and don't add anything positive to gameplay.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

The problem with partial failure for not meeting time limits is that no one wants to play for a consolation prize and have be reminded of their failure for the rest of their experience, and people would just reload. And if you make the failure inconspicuous and it is only learned at the end, it is frustrating as well.

No, a hard time limit signifying direct failure is the way to go. Nothing produces more tension and sense of total impending doom. In your first Fallout playtrohugh, if you don't get close to a solution soon for the water chip you get tremendously involved and desperate.

 

[sea]

This issue is similar to the issue of enemy encounter design, or enemy leveling.
If you do it through overarching mechanics - like level scaling - you end up with shit.
If you do it by hand... which is harder - and it god damn makes sense that a better option is harder - then you get great content.

Have to disagree. Level scaling can work in certain situations - it all boils down to execution. For example, you could have a handful of preset encounter types that are hand-built, but spawned based on player level. There are lazy and cheap ways to do it, yes, but there are also effective ways to do it, just like any other part of a game.

Now, I'm not saying that you should only ever express something as a mechanic etc., but creating one that governs a given side of a game and requires intelligent gameplay decisions on behalf of the player, then providing some in-game consequence both in gameplay and narrative, that's more effective than any straight-up story consequence in my opinion. A little can go a very, very long way so long as the player feels that decisions are important, and it's getting the player in that mindset that's important, not providing a hundred endings and quest options.

 

[Johannes]

Mostly there should be a feeling that there's something happening in the world that's not directly done by the player. About having consequences not only for your actions but also for inaction, and choosing between doing this or that a tradeoff instead of doing both being a no-brainer (even if doing both is still possible, but something undesirable happens meanwhile). Most games don't have any reason beyond player boredom, to not complete every fetch quest there is available or any bad consequence from grinding random mobs and such.
On the other hand you want the player to be able to experience all the content you made - but on the other hand, with no time-scaling, or level-scaling or another similar method, you're also hurting any player who doesn't want to do every single thing available to them, because of them considering it boring, due to RPing reasons, whatever.


Now, in Fallout the time limit was pretty meaningless in the end - you really had to screw around doing nothing a lot to reach it, but then you didn't initially know that so it did help the game have a certain atmosphere, at least at the start of the game on first playthrough. Compared to, say, Icewind Dale 1, where Resting was basically free and you'd easily end up with a 3-digit day count when using "rest until healed", with no effect in a setting where time was supposedly running against you, it breaks the mood.

It's definitely offputting when a game doesn't reward you at all for being efficient.

 

[hiver]

no one wants to play for a consolation prize ............... reminded of their failure ..............., and people would just

Oh hey Humanity... talking in name of all those people again, are we?
How about you start talking just in your name, for a change?

This issue is similar to the issue of enemy encounter design, or enemy leveling.
If you do it through overarching mechanics - like level scaling - you end up with shit.
If you do it by hand... which is harder - and it god damn makes sense that a better option is harder - then you get great content.

Have to disagree. Level scaling can work in certain situations - it all boils down to execution. For example, you could have a handful of preset encounter types that are hand-built, but spawned based on player level. There are lazy and cheap ways to do it, yes, but there are also effective ways to do it, just like any other part of a game.

Now, I'm not saying that you should only ever express something as a mechanic etc., but creating one that governs a given side of a game and requires intelligent gameplay decisions on behalf of the player, then providing some in-game consequence both in gameplay and narrative, that's more effective than any straight-up story consequence in my opinion. A little can go a very, very long way so long as the player feels that decisions are important, and it's getting the player in that mindset that's important, not providing a hundred endings and quest options.

Oh. Rilley?
Well i then have to agree!
hah! get that one, suckah!

Seriously though, The problem really is that when devs start thinking about mechanic solution to such over arching problems they immediately put themselves on the path of least resistance and easy half-assed solutions.
Plus, as i said, it may lead to overblowing the specific feature all over the game, which is not necessary, desirable or good if its made without damn good reason.

And execution is the problem, - indeed.

If all that is kept firmly in mind when the pre-production is still going and overarching general plans are made... the ending product may turn out good.
If not, we get stupid, shallow, annoying shit.

As for your example of level scaling that could work - it includes serious thought, care and hand work in execution, does it not?
Then it is not simply just a mechanic solution.

 

[Wavinator]

As an explorer normally I hate time limits. But I've always thought Fallout and Star Control 2 were two games that did them well. The consequences were dire, you were warned along the way and it made every action seem more important because you couldn't just magic the threat away, you had to prioritize. In FO it was refreshing because, just like not being the Chosen One, the time limit gave a sense of not being the center of the universe. Things would happen with or without you.

I don't know about the idea MCA proposes of making time limits tied to inventory. I could see a game mechanic just like the extension in Fallout you get for the water chip quest, maybe hauling arms to fortify the Vault enough to ward off the Master's attentions. But if it becomes spammable there's a false note-- things aren't dire, you're just gaming the system indefinitely.

Maybe this is one of those things best left to a checkbox in options.