Messages

121

Design / Re: Permanent consequences for failure that aren't death

« on: April 09, 2014, 02:24:56 AM »

What is this punishment good for, how is it better?

Permadeath and similar punishments increase tension and force you to play better.  You don't need to be cautious if you can't be hurt.

Tension is maybe better for you, not everyone. And you are likely in minority there, people prefer to relax. But you are forced to play better either way. If a game requires skill and has progressive difficulty you will not advance until you get better. The only difference is you don't rewind as much, it's not easier, just faster.

You don't need to be cautions if you don't mind re-playing the same thing over and over, but if you want to advance you will need to, just the same. Save-scumming doesn't make you invincible, and rewinding back to the beginning of the level is punishing as well, it's punishing enough.

You don't need to plan ahead if you can turn back time.

If planing ahead is necessary than it is necessary either way. Save-scumming doesn't make you invincible, if you failed to prepare you will get stuck unable to advance. Also, you can not plan ahead if you never completed the game before, it's like trying to do a speed run on your first play-through.

There's nothing exciting about winning a game when there was no possibility of losing.

Losing what? The only thing there is to lose is time. Save-scumming doesn't make you invincible, you fail and try again just the same. You lose in either case, you loose time, just not as much.

Excitement is not the only thing that makes games enjoyable. Experimenting with different tactics and trying to push a character as far as it can go is fun as well, if not more fun. I also prefer to complete a game first and then decide if I really want to be attempting to beat it with only one life, or is it worth playing at all.

Different people like different things. You go ahead and play with only one life or sit on a cactus if that makes it more tense for you. You don't see anyone complaining other types of games have easy difficulty or save option, if not for you those options are for other people, and then it does not concern you.

122

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 08, 2014, 03:34:58 AM »

I don't think that a reasonable person could fail to grasp the difference between the restricted saving and loading behavior of roguelikes -- the game is always saved on exit, including death, and as a result, a given save can be loaded exactly once -- and unrestricted saving and loading of game states (the more common approach in modern games) or the effect these two approaches have on the difficulty of games. I also don't believe a reasonable person could give such an equivocal answer to Vanguard's question about bowling 12 strikes in a row versus 12 strikes nonconsecutively across a number of games. It is extremely easy to formalize the relevant notion of difficulty in terms of basic probability, of which LazyCat seems to have no knowledge as witnessed in other threads.

I don't know what you can do with such a persistent and irrational poster, quite honestly.

Don't blame me for your own inability to understand. Game difficulty is programmed within the game, saving and loading a game state does not change it. You are confusing faster with easier, confusing tedious with difficult. Going back to play all over from the beginning is not difficult, it's just time consuming.

123

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 08, 2014, 02:40:07 AM »

I was being facetious with my example because you're so dense but all of those things are an extension of simple tactics and are trivial if there is a safety net to catch you if you fail. You just try every possibility until you succeed. Or even try losing strategies until they work with the help of the RNG.

Going back to play all over until you get in a similar situation does not make it any different. You are again going to try one of those same strategies, the only difference is with permadeath you are wasting more time between the tries. Do you understand?

124

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 08, 2014, 02:26:23 AM »

Because, among other things, save abuse lets you keep the health, ammo, and other resources your mistakes would have cost you.  Why are you having such a hard with this basic concept?

You do not keep anything. You fail and try again on the exact same game difficulty. The only difference is you don't rewind as much. You still didn't answer the question: does saving a game alter the game's behaviour?

125

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 08, 2014, 02:03:49 AM »

I have no idea what you're talking about, almost every roguelike involves pressing a direction key until a monster is dead. You can savescum as many times as you like to get that job done without any skill whatsoever.

Try Brogue, that tactics will not get you far. Bumping is the most trivial part. To advance you need to learn how to manage your inventory, to conserve and use appropriate items in appropriate times. You need to learn to innovate and improvise, to use environment features to your advantage. You need to learn how to approach different monsters, when and where to retreat and when to avoid combat and sneak by. Until then you will not advance, no matter how much you save-scum.

126

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 08, 2014, 01:32:45 AM »

there's no possible way that replaying the same encounter over and over again makes you a better player, if you reload every time until you beat that ogre in melee then you are just becoming lazy and stupid as a player, you are genuinely deluded

You are playing wrong roguelikes. In roguelikes that require skill reloading will not help you, you will advance only when and if you actually get better. Like in every other game that requires skill. You don't beat that final boss in Resident Evil after 20 save reloads because you become lazy and stupid, you beat it only when and if you become better.

127

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 08, 2014, 01:20:40 AM »

Dude, just go grab an emulator and something like Battletoads and try it out.  That will prove once and for all whether saving affects difficulty and it will take way less time than arguing on the internet will.

I did. I already told you several times. It is your turn to answer your own question.

Does saving a game alter the game's behaviour, does it become any easier after you load? What exactly is it that becomes easier, can you name it?

Or if that's too hard for you, answer this: which takes more skill?  Bowling a perfect game by landing 12 consecutive strikes, or bowling 12 nonconsecutive strikes over the course of multiple games.  Are they exactly the same difficulty, or is one harder than the other?  Explain your answer.

Depending on skill 12 consecutive strikes will be more or less likely to happen, where each strike will be equally difficult to pull off. You are using the term "difficulty" too loosely, there are different types of difficulty. You can't be vague or generalizing, different types of difficulty don't compare.

128

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 08, 2014, 12:28:02 AM »

It's very different thing to play with permadeath when you have already completed a game before, once you know how to actually play properly. But until then it's like playing chess without fully knowing the rules. It's like trying to do a speed run on your first play-through.

When learning to play chess you don't start all over when you lose, you keep analysing and re-playing your last few moves until you understand where the problem was and how to solve it. Starting all over would not make chess more difficult, it would only make your learning more time consuming and tedious. You wouldn't want to learn chess that way, I don't see why is it any better to torture yourself like that in roguelike.

129

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 08, 2014, 12:04:11 AM »

what game did you play

Every game. Game difficulty is defined by monsters health, strength, speed, attack damage and such. Saving a game state does not alter how the game difficulty is programmed within the game. You don't advance because it becomes easier, you advance only when and if you get better. You should realize then the difficulty you are talking about can not possibly be "game difficulty", but something else.

130

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 07, 2014, 01:08:42 PM »

I read a lot of internet discussion -- too much, really -- and this line of argument has to be one of silliest I've seen in some time. If genre means anything outside of its original context (art, music, and literature) then the idioms and aspects of design you mention are precisely the kind of things that could define a genre. Your argument boils down to: "You can't define a genre that way!" Well, actually, you can.

You can, just like you can divide by zero. The only trouble is result is a nonsense.

Any type of game can have only one life. Any type of game can be turn-based. Any type of game can use procedural level design. And many games do. You make your classification based on these general properties and you will get a category that applies to anything and everything, and for which everyone has their own personal interpretation, apparently.

131

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 07, 2014, 12:29:19 PM »

it would ruin everything because the game would be catering for two fundamentally opposed audiences and become an incoherent thematic mess which i would hate, ie dungeons of dredmore. If you aren't a gentle virgin nerd who burns for the sweet release of permadeath then you are a blight on this bizarre community

I was afraid that was the case. Now we must fight. Fight to death. No... to permadeath! Whichever audience counts greater number of people wins the right to define what is roguelike and what is good or bad for it. Do you accept the challenge?

132

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 07, 2014, 11:34:28 AM »

Disagree, especially if the game has RNG. If you play DnD and roll a miss, you don't get to re-roll till you get a hit or a critical. Tedium is not removed by running the RNG till you get the success you want, this actually increases the tedium.

I agree with that, only if that was true it would mean there is no any skill involved in the game at all. I don't know what's worse, I can only assure you that some roguelikes do require skill. And then you can save-scum all you want, but you will not advance until you improve.

133

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 07, 2014, 11:20:39 AM »

I just don't get it, I played years of nethack and got into roguelikes that way and everything I like about them is defeated entirely by savescumming and I would assume that the silent majority of people who played games like that over the years agree.

I don't mind permadeath. The question is why wouldn't there be both.

Suppose we confirmed 90% of people don't play roguelikes because of permadeath, would you agree then it is in developer's and everyone's interest to include save option after all? Would such option ruin anything for you?

134

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 07, 2014, 10:46:13 AM »

(Also, I'd like to distance myself from this nonsense about permadeath not making games more difficult -- this is so obviously and straightforwardly wrong it's amazing there could be controversy.

Game difficulty is defined in a binary file, saving a game state does not alter that binary file, it can not change the game difficulty. You should realize then the difficulty you are talking about can not possibly be "game difficulty", but something else. It is easy to confuse tedium for difficulty.

135

Design / Re: My two cents about Permadeath

« on: April 07, 2014, 09:47:29 AM »

Instead of talking about it all day, go take my test and we'll have proof.  Let's really find out whether saving affects difficulty instead of typing a bunch of words that won't accomplish anything.

I tested it. Monsters didn't go any slower after I saved, they didn't have less health, or anything. Game and its difficulty stayed absolutely the same. Is your observation different?


Let you and me start playing the same game today. I will save at the beginning of each floor, you don't save at all. Suppose now we both die on 10th floor. So I reload my save and then wait for you to reach 10th floor again. When you finally get there and we both continue playing, is the game going to be any easier for me? The answer is no.