FAIL STATE INFLATION - Monocled, or degenerate?

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Well.

I have NO doubt that there is NOTHING wrong with save reload whatsoever. We are playing a COMPUTER game and I want to really avoid all that frustration of playing an intricate game and dying because of Random rolls. This is just one scenario, as I see it. Death outside of random rolls (the dog ate your keyboard death) is equally a random situation in a NON random game. This means that 'Save scumming' is a boon to computer gamers. If developers can't design games around it, then they are dumb, straight and simple.

Seriously, blaming players for their mistakes is the worst copout ever the developer can think of. Sawyer is doing EXACTLY that.

What about roguelikes

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

What Papa Mole said. In many RPGs, party members are far to important to the narrative and gameplay to just give them up after a combat encounter gone bad.
It's different in games like Fallout where the recruitable NPCs are more or less guns for hire that have no bearing on the story or any character depth to speak of. But even in Fallout losing a party member is kind of hard to accept, because it will often cause tedious hassle.

Let me explain what I mean: If your're recruiting party members in Fallout (2), this probably means that your character has some weaknesses that need to be compensated (because if you create an ultimate self-reliant killing machine you might as well go solo in the first place). So know you have a combat encounter and Sulik dies and you think "alright I won't reload and deal with it" but then you realize your character has only 5 Strength and you think "awww man fuck it, lost my packmule, what am I going to do with all the items he was carrying". So you're not only losing a party member, you're also increasing the tediousness of inventory management, which is a pointless consequence with no benefit to gameplay.


I'd like to stress another point: Overusing save-scumming is bad, but keep in mind that the need to achieve optimal results often is a significant source of gameplay challenge. If you weaken the consequences of (combat) failure, like you seem to be suggesting Infinitron, you take away that challenge.

Best example is the "party members are knocked unconscious" approach used in games like Neverwinter Nights 2 or Dragon Age. The same encounter will be much easier if you just have to keep one party member alive throughout the encounter (because the others will be automatically resurrected afterwards ), it will be much harder if you have to beat your enemies while keeping your party members from dying. Reloading and finding a better tactic/ approach that will keep your party members alive is part of the challenge. By removing perma-death you run the risk of removing much of the challenge that combat encounters hold.

That's exactly what happened in Dragon Age. I remember Bioware saying they wanted to discourage players from save-scumming by removing death and introducing alternative, lighter punishments for failure, for example injury. Alas, that didn't work out too well, and all they did was removing pretty much all the challenge from combat.

I'd like to stress again that in most games, when used in moderation, save & reload is an important part of gameplay and should not be demonized as "casual" and "popamole".
On the other hand, of course I realize that the possiblity to save and releoad at any time often turns crucial gameplay element obsolete.
Safe-scum in Jagged Alliance 2 and you make scouting, stealth and good positioning much less important than it should be.

I don't have a solution right now. My personal approach is to use save and reload in moderation, for example allowing myself only to save once during every combat encounter in Jagged Alliance 2 and either to deal with the fact that a merc died or having to replay most of the encounter.

 

[Infinitron]

I'd like to stress another point: Overusing save-scumming is bad, but keep in mind that the need to achieve optimal results often is a significant source of gameplay challenge. If you weaken the consequences of (combat) failure, like you seem to be suggesting Infinitron, you take away that challenge.

Best example is the "party members are knocked unconscious" approach used in games like Neverwinter Nights 2 or Dragon Age. The same encounter will be much easier if you just have to keep one party member alive throughout the encounter (because the others will be automatically resurrected afterwards ), it will be much harder if you have to beat your enemies while keeping your party members from dying. Reloading and finding a better tactic/ approach that will keep your party members alive is part of the challenge. By removing perma-death you run the risk of removing much of the challenge that combat encounters hold.

I said as much in the OP. You're definitely imposing additional challenges upon yourself by playing this way. But again, it's a double edged sword. Gradually, your characters become these cheesy unstoppable juggernauts Who Have Never Failed. Because the game incentivizes you to never accept a failure situation, even if it would make the game even more challenging if you accepted your failures and toughed it out.

That's exactly what happened in Dragon Age. I remember Bioware saying they wanted to discourage players from save-scumming by removing death and introducing alternative, lighter punishments for failure, for example injury. Alas, that didn't work out too well, and all they did was removing pretty much all the challenge from combat.

Yes, console popamole RPGs go too far in removing all consequences. Said that too.

I don't have a solution right now. My personal approach is to use save and reload in moderation, for example allowing myself only to save once during every combat encounter in Jagged Alliance 2 and either to deal with the fact that a merc died or having to replay most of the encounter.

Yep, that would be the "abstinence" solution.

 

[roshan]

Infinitron - how do character's end up becoming cheesy unstoppable juggernauts due to "fail state inflation"? A realistic example from some well known RPGs will do.

 

[Infinitron]

Infinitron - how do character's end up becoming cheesy unstoppable juggernauts due to "fail state inflation"? A realistic example from some well known RPGs will do.

It's self-evident. They've plowed through hundreds of enemies without dying. They've never had to expend precious resources to come back from the brink of failure, because they've never been on the brink of failure.

And it can be worse than just character death.

"Use a potion? Fuck no, I'll just reload again and again until I can beat this battle WITHOUT using the potion."

Unfun OCD bullshit masquerading as hardcore gaming.

 

[Infinitron]

The real issue is why the fuck are you concerned with other people? Are they complaining? No. You are acting like a whiny bitch because someone else is playing the game with more restrictions than you do. Ask yourself if that even makes sense to question it. I myself *detest* Nightmare difficulties (and I mean real nightmare difficulties like in Serious Sam) or Ironman, but don't feel the feeble urge to criticize people playing that way.

As I showed in OP, this stuff does have ramifications on the way games are designed. When game designers make games, they have in mind the way players are playing.

Trying to encourage people to "play smarter" is in fact a very worthwhile endeavor.

 

[Cromwell]

Infinitron - how do character's end up becoming cheesy unstoppable juggernauts due to "fail state inflation"? A realistic example from some well known RPGs will do.

It's self-evident. They've plowed through hundreds of enemies without dying. They've never had to expend precious resources to come back from the brink of failure, because they've never been on the brink of failure.

And it can be worse than just character death.

"Use a potion? Fuck no, I'll just reload again and again until I can beat this battle WITHOUT using the potion."

Unfun OCD bullshit masquerading as hardcore gaming.

But why should the devs now try to stop players from doing this, thats like trying to stop cheating. I'm all for games well balanced without to much randomness induced partywipes where I can do nothing but staring, or games which try to have a very good learning curve and dont start punishing you severe until mid to late game if you didnt pay attention.

 

[roshan]

It's self-evident. They've plowed through hundreds of enemies without dying. They've never had to expend precious resources to come back from the brink of failure, because they've never been on the brink of failure.

And it can be worse than just character death.

"Use a potion? Fuck no, I'll just reload again and again until I can beat this battle WITHOUT using the potion."

Unfun OCD bullshit masquerading as hardcore gaming.

You're being silly. If you don't use potions in combat it doesn't matter if you accumulate 5000 healing potions in your inventory. Resurrection spells are eventually free anyway so you're not making the game easier in anyway by refusing to use them.

I think you're just upset that some players have much more skill than you and don't need retards like JE Sawyer to implement forced auto resurrection for them so that they don't fail at combat anymore.

 

[Infinitron]

I guess I should admit at this point that I had you in mind when I wrote the OP, roshan. Thanks for the inspiration, man.

 

[Cromwell]

You're being silly. If you don't use potions in combat it doesn't matter if you accumulate 5000 healing potions in your inventory. Resurrection spells are eventually free anyway so you're not making the game easier in anyway by refusing to use them.

I think you're just upset that some players have much more skill than you and don't need retards like JE Sawyer to implement forced auto resurrection for them so that they don't fail at combat anymore.

You haven't heard the worst. Sawyer is ok about implementing BIASED dice to help the losing players next.

Dont Kill me for it but isnt that the same thing like the wipe buffs blizzard will implement in the next wow patch, where yozu get +damage healing hp after every wipe to help you complete the raid? Or is this considered to much at this point?

 

[Captain Shrek]

Dont Kill me for it but isnt that the same thing like the wipe buffs blizzard will implement in the next wow patch, where yozu get +damage healing hp after every wipe to help you complete the raid? Or is this considered to much at this point?

no clue. Don't play WoW or most MMOs. But it is equivalent to actively prevent losing players from losing. What you describe does smack of that.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

You're being silly. If you don't use potions in combat it doesn't matter if you accumulate 5000 healing potions in your inventory. Resurrection spells are eventually free anyway so you're not making the game easier in anyway by refusing to use them.

By refusing to use them, no. By reloading instead of taking the consequences, yes.

 

[Cromwell]

You're being silly. If you don't use potions in combat it doesn't matter if you accumulate 5000 healing potions in your inventory. Resurrection spells are eventually free anyway so you're not making the game easier in anyway by refusing to use them.

By refusing to use them, no. By reloading instead of taking the consequences, yes.

So when I am able to get through the first to big fights in an hour because I take the consequences and go forward i will have a harder game in the end because i have fewer potions, maybe crippled party members, after ten hours. Somebody abuses his saves and plays his luck, because the only thing he does is roll again, and he takes 30 hours to be at the same point as me. So is the cost worth the easier game? where is the difference between abusing save games or playing on very easy mode?

whats the downside to somebody at the other end of the world playing a game and abusing saves? Its not like games are designed to make it very hard for them even with save abuse and in turn make it impossible for normal players.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The real issue is why the fuck are you concerned with other people? Are they complaining?

YES you insipid retard. The internet is filled to the brim with people bitching about every game out there for every reason imaginable. Many of these people are bitching about boring gameplay/combat they created themselves by savescumming. They don't mention that they savescum when they make these complaints because it's embarrassing and 'normal' to reload 20 times to pickpocket everyone in town without getting caught.

So fucking sick of hearing this excuse. "STFU. Why should you care what I think!?!? Stop expressing your opinion so only mine can be heard!"


On the topic itself, a large issue is the extent to which games are randomized. IE games are a great example of this. A given encounter can easily revolve around a single saving throw or To-hit roll. If a key character gets hit by a save or die spell, you're fucked and need to reload. You can play it out for the TPK, or the near wipe leading to a TPK in the next encounter, but ultimately the game is designed around the assumption that you never get hit by such spells. Fallout is similar with critical hits. And all the combat is like this. Every dick and jane with a rifle can shoot you in the eyes for an instakill. An encounter can end in flawless victory or total defeat on the first round just because 1 roll was changed by ~10 points.

By contrast, roguelikes involve a ton of combat which has no chance at all of one shotting you, and most one shot kills are foreseeable (or bullshit that I'd argue shouldn't be in the game). Fights where you incrementally lose ~10% of your hp each turn, where your chances of hitting an attack are near 100%. You can avoid the need to reload by running away or expending consumables because that is how the game is designed. The challenge arises from long term management of resources and risk of those resources, rather than short term dice rolling. If you added the option to save and reload anywhere in Nethack, it'd be far far easier- but it'd still be a good fucking game, and the potential to test your skill with an ironman run remains. Fallout wouldn't be a good game if it were forced ironman. Nor would it be a good game if it kept the same mechanics but tweaked the base stats to make ironman viable, because then you'd be getting through nearly every fight totally unscathed in order to reduce the risk of being shot to death in the eyes to a manageable level.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm not sure Fallout couldn't be enjoyable on Ironman, but brofisting for effort.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Fallout wouldn't be a good game if it were forced ironman. Nor would it be a good game if it kept the same mechanics but tweaked the base stats to make ironman viable, because then you'd be getting through nearly every fight totally unscathed in order to reduce the risk of being shot to death in the eyes to a manageable level.

I play Fallout exclusively iron man and I find it much less frustrating than playing with reloads. I have never finished it that way, but it's entertaining and unlike when playing with SFLing, I never felt compelled to punch my computer. Mainly because in iron man mode one can die to a critical hit only once.

Though I'm playing with a mod that increases weapon damage and with modified critical tables so it's not as crazily random as the original - that is there is less situations where I get attacked by a mob because a headshot failed to kill an opponent.

 

[Papa Môlé]

Related to thread, I often wonder if the "hardcore" crowd has a tendency to accept things as their fault that were really random so it's easier to psychologically rationalize taking credit for things they didn't earn either. In other words, you see a lot of the time people talking about how tedious and unfair things are "brutal" but you rarely ever see them talk about how they beat the boss by a series of strong dice rolls that buffered less than stellar tactics. They might notice a really lucky critical, but you never hear tales about how the dragon died because our hero rolled all average or slightly better for the encounter.

 

[Lilura]

On the topic itself, a large issue is the extent to which games are randomized. IE games are a great example of this. A given encounter can easily revolve around a single saving throw or To-hit roll. If a key character gets hit by a save or die spell, you're fucked and need to reload. You can play it out for the TPK, or the near wipe leading to a TPK in the next encounter, but ultimately the game is designed around the assumption that you never get hit by such spells. Fallout is similar with critical hits. And all the combat is like this. Every dick and jane with a rifle can shoot you in the eyes for an instakill. An encounter can end in flawless victory or total defeat on the first round just because 1 roll was changed by ~10 points.

Well, in the BG series if the protagonist fails a "save vs. death" then that's gameover and you're staring at an FMV, so there's no playing it out in that case anyway.

But I think IE is based around the assumption that you protect yourself from those spells and other dangerous attacks. Buff your saves, buff your AC, HPs, MR and resistances.
Or if you fail to protect try to mitigate the effects by dispelling the negative status. Now if the game is designed around not getting hit by them then why are their spells to bring you out of a panic or domination or pertrification and the like? Why is there a ressurrection spell? I'm not saying there aren't times when as a newbie you are insta-killed or find yourself inescapably withering away to nothing, but by and large you can protect yourself with long-lasting spells (e.g Death Ward) which abjure negative status before MR or saves (the other two layers) even need to kick in.

I agree that for a newbie the RNG is gonna wreak havoc but once you start to learn how the numbers work (RTFM) you realise the idea is to work the dice rolls in your favor to lessen the odds that something bad will happen and this is accomplished by applying relevant buffs to your units and building them and equipping them appropriately.

All IE games can be ironmanned without exception and quite confidently, even IWD2 Heart of Fury. Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 can be ironmanned and so can ToEE (though ToEE is buggy so you should enforce it manually). This is because they give a massive amount of options and either give you enough expendable party members (BG series) or grace you with a party re-creation/-composition system in-game (IWD series+ToEE+JA2) or again you're simply immortal (PS:T, with a couple exceptions). Fallout is definitely precarious to ironman due mainly to Enclaver crits, I agree.

 

[hiver]

That whole matter is merely a consequence of games narrowing the content. Combat is narrowed to action and "shootan" so it too often comes down to a choice between two extreme binary options.
You more or less have to fight and win, or die. And reload.

Then the gameplay style of players is narrowed down to either toughing it out or saving and reloading, and that makes any given number of people do it more often.

Which, when you look at it from this angle, is really just a quite natural reaction to unfairness that system imposed by limiting how you can interact with that situation.

Full RPGs tend to have relatively less of this effect, of course, because they at least try to allow you to influence quests and stories of the game in other ways, by dialogue or C&C of the quests ... which sometimes may even change some combat... even if i dont really remember any big examples in "rpgs" of the last several years. (which, of course are action rpgs, by big majority)

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Fallout wouldn't be a good game if it were forced ironman. Nor would it be a good game if it kept the same mechanics but tweaked the base stats to make ironman viable, because then you'd be getting through nearly every fight totally unscathed in order to reduce the risk of being shot to death in the eyes to a manageable level.

I play Fallout exclusively iron man and I find it much less frustrating than playing with reloads. I have never finished it that way, but it's entertaining and unlike when playing with SFLing, I never felt compelled to punch my computer. Mainly because in iron man mode one can die to a critical hit only once.

Though I'm playing with a mod that increases weapon damage and with modified critical tables so it's not as crazily random as the original - that is there is less situations where I get attacked by a mob because a headshot failed to kill an opponent.

That doesn't make much sense. How restarting from the very beginning because lolcriticalhit could be less frustrating than restarting from the last save from ten minutes ago because lolcriticalhit? Even if you're playing with a "I can die anytime" mindset, getting a "LOL 3000 DAMAGE, UR DEAD" roll should be even more infuriating if it sends you back to the beginning of the game. I guess your mod is responsible for making things more enjoyable, not the playstyle.

 

[roshan]

By refusing to use them, no. By reloading instead of taking the consequences, yes.

You fool, there are no consequences to using healing potions (which are normally cheap and can be found in the dozens) or casting free resurrection spells.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I thought it's going to be about tentacles pumping characters with slime until they explode.

No, that discussion is over in the Japanese RPG thread. That's where you can find the Kickstarter for Inma Gakuen Gaiden: Fail State Inflation.

 

[roshan]

I guess I should admit at this point that I had you in mind when I wrote the OP, roshan. Thanks for the inspiration, man.

As a "fail state inflator", I guess I should explain the concept from the point of view of one of it's practitioners.

1. Fail state inflation doesn't turn my characters into powerful juggernauts of combat. I build powerful juggernauts of combat through my knowledge of the game's system and rules, plus some metagame knowledge. For example, one of the characters I am building is going to be a fighter(4)/ranger(1)/paladin(2)/cleric(20)/monk(1) and the character will be a juggernaut regardless of anything

2. The goal is not convenience. The goal is to avoid certain mechanics of the game that make it too easy (potions, resurrection spells) so that you end up making use of more interesting game mechanics that you otherwise wouldn't make use of. For example, if I played Icewind Dale 2 on normal difficulty and used healing potions and resurrected my characters, I would be able to power through the game with ease. But if I play it with the tactics mod, on insane difficulty, and banned myself from potions and resurrection, I now find myself having to make use of tactics which I otherwise wouldn't bother with at all due to the game being ridiculously easy.

I actually played the game earlier, and fought a battle where my archer was down to 15% hp and had a half goblin standing in front of her. Ordinarily, I would just chug a potion and melee the half goblin. But since that was out of the question, I instead casted command on the goblin with my Dreadmaster of Bane. So "fail state inflation" makes the combat system more fun and interesting to me since it actually makes me synchronize the actions of multiple characters, and use more intelligent tactics.

 

[Damned Registrations]

On the topic itself, a large issue is the extent to which games are randomized. IE games are a great example of this. A given encounter can easily revolve around a single saving throw or To-hit roll. If a key character gets hit by a save or die spell, you're fucked and need to reload. You can play it out for the TPK, or the near wipe leading to a TPK in the next encounter, but ultimately the game is designed around the assumption that you never get hit by such spells. Fallout is similar with critical hits. And all the combat is like this. Every dick and jane with a rifle can shoot you in the eyes for an instakill. An encounter can end in flawless victory or total defeat on the first round just because 1 roll was changed by ~10 points.

Well, in the BG series if the protagonist fails a "save vs. death" then that's gameover and you're staring at an FMV, so there's no playing it out in that case anyway.

But I think IE is based around the assumption that you protect yourself from those spells and other dangerous attacks. Buff your saves, buff your AC, HPs, MR and resistances.
Or if you fail to protect try to mitigate the effects by dispelling the negative status. Now if the game is designed around not getting hit by them then why are their spells to bring you out of a panic or domination or pertrification and the like? Why is there a ressurrection spell? I'm not saying there aren't times when as a newbie you are insta-killed or find yourself inescapably withering away to nothing, but by and large you can protect yourself with long-lasting spells (e.g Death Ward) which abjure negative status before MR or saves (the other two layers) even need to kick in.

I agree that for a newbie the RNG is gonna wreak havoc but once you start to learn how the numbers work (RTFM) you realise the idea is to work the dice rolls in your favor to lessen the odds that something bad will happen and this is accomplished by applying relevant buffs to your units and building them and equipping them appropriately.

All IE games can be ironmanned without exception and quite confidently, even IWD2 Heart of Fury. Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 can be ironmanned and so can ToEE (though ToEE is buggy so you should enforce it manually). This is because they give a massive amount of options and either give you enough expendable party members (BG series) or grace you with a party re-creation/-composition system in-game (IWD series+ToEE+JA2) or again you're simply immortal (PS:T, with a couple exceptions). Fallout is definitely precarious to ironman due mainly to Enclaver crits, I agree.

The thing is, even with buffed saves (and good luck buffing all of them on all your party members) you're just pushing the chance of insta loss from 50% to 25% or whatever. And having barriers or cures ready often requires knowing what you're up against in advance. If I go from fighting wolves, to fighting skeletons, to fighting a flesh golem, to Domination out of nowhere, I probably didn't have any countermeasures ready. Though I suppose one could argue I was stupid for not sneaking ahead with a thief to scout every encounter ever in the entire game, I think it's more plausible you were expected to encounter sirens, die to them if they dominated you, and then reload until you either use foreknowledge or luck to avoid that result.

I mean hell, you could leave the protag in a safe place and never even put him in dangerous combat and just send out your expendable party members to explore and ironman the game that way easily, but that's certainly not how the game was designed to be played, any more than roguelikes are designed to be played by stairscumming on low levels until you have infinite wish loops or other such bullshit.

The issue is that even if the dice are in your favour for a given encounter, they're against you in the long run. You need to make dozens if not hundreds of saving throws to win the game. You're going to roll a few ones even if you started at level 20. If the system were designed to allow degrees of success rather than to not muck up PnP with too much math and rolling, you could get your resistances to a point where you're not in danger of instant death or total paralysis or long duration charms, and could fight onward even after a nasty surprise. Moreover, the game is designed around the assumption that you won't play ironman, with very little procedurally generated content and mostly stuff you'll know like the back of your hand the umpteenth time around anyways. Walking into the gnomish mines for the tenth time and hoping you don't need that nice wand of digging you found is a lot more interesting than walking into the spider forest the tenth time and hoping you don't fail to move through a web over and over again.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

That doesn't make much sense. How restarting from the very beginning because lolcriticalhit could be less frustrating than restarting from the last save from ten minutes ago because lolcriticalhit?

In my case most of frustration came from repetition. From trying to do stuff and getting lolcritkilled again and again.
When I die in Fallout, I just end the game, that's it. I start again later. But then now I'm a casual gamer and I don't spend several hours a day playing games any more.

Even if you're playing with a "I can die anytime" mindset, getting a "LOL 3000 DAMAGE, UR DEAD" roll should be even more infuriating if it sends you back to the beginning of the game.

Why should it be infuriating? I'm not doing anything important, just getting entertained for a while.

As a "fail state inflator", I guess I should explain the concept from the point of view of one of it's practitioners.

1. Fail state inflation doesn't turn my characters into powerful juggernauts of combat. I build powerful juggernauts of combat through my knowledge of the game's system and rules, plus some metagame knowledge. For example, one of the characters I am building is going to be a fighter(4)/ranger(1)/paladin(2)/cleric(20)/monk(1) and the character will be a juggernaut regardless of anything

2. The goal is not convenience. The goal is to avoid certain mechanics of the game that make it too easy (potions, resurrection spells) so that you end up making use of more interesting game mechanics that you otherwise wouldn't make use of. For example, if I played Icewind Dale 2 on normal difficulty and used healing potions and resurrected my characters, I would be able to power through the game with ease. But if I play it with the tactics mod, on insane difficulty, and banned myself from potions and resurrection, I now find myself having to make use of tactics which I otherwise wouldn't bother with at all due to the game being ridiculously easy.

I actually played the game earlier, and fought a battle where my archer was down to 15% hp and had a half goblin standing in front of her. Ordinarily, I would just chug a potion and melee the half goblin. But since that was out of the question, I instead casted command on the goblin with my Dreadmaster of Bane. So "fail state inflation" makes the combat system more fun and interesting to me since it actually makes me synchronize the actions of multiple characters, and use more intelligent tactics.

I don't think that's what the thread is about. Anyway, sounds like you need a magical item scarcity mod.