Difficult vs Punishing Games

[Vanguard]

It's the game designer's job to make sure their game is good, yes.

[Endorya]

That is very true. I wonder how an implementation would look if the game was designed to keep track of your conduct. It could analyse every encounter throughout the game and maybe provide some feedback on which encounters could have went better. Something like that (obviously oversimplified example) might be interesting to look at.

I'm already working on it and already have a few ideas on how to implement it, though I'm referring to the character's last moments only.

[CaptainKraft]

Re: in-game advice and the idea of telling your players how not to die sounds like a good idea, but in reality, if your game is even moderately interesting, it will not be possible to accurately determine what a player did wrong to make him die (this is often a complex matter even for players of middling skill). [Edit: Sorry, didn't notice someone had made the same point upthread.] More importantly, it should not be obvious to the designer what the best thing a player could do is. It's good to have certain strategies in mind that serve as a guide to what the player might be able to do, but good players should be finding strategies you hadn't thought of.

This feature would be for players that are new to the game and need the help. Advanced players using advanced tactics wouldn't need the help anyway.

To expand on the idea of helping the player learn what to do better, here's a radical concept: Allow the player to replay the last turns of his life, without offering the possibility of resurrection if he does better, but simply as a learning experience. Experienced players wouldn't bother, I think, but it offers an interesting puzzle to new players: How could I have played this differently?

That's a really cool idea. Even though it would only give you a snapshot of what you did most recently, it could still be pretty cool. Learning about less recent history would still be the job of the player's memory.

[mushroom patch]

To expand on the idea of helping the player learn what to do better, here's a radical concept: Allow the player to replay the last turns of his life, without offering the possibility of resurrection if he does better, but simply as a learning experience. Experienced players wouldn't bother, I think, but it offers an interesting puzzle to new players: How could I have played this differently?

That's a really cool idea. Even though it would only give you a snapshot of what you did most recently, it could still be pretty cool. Learning about less recent history would still be the job of the player's memory.

You can go pretty far with this concept. If your game has this deterministic RNG/seed business discussed in another thread, all you need to do is keep a log of player commands and replay them up to the desired turn -- you could use an archive of save files if this creates a performance issue. So in fact, it's quite feasible to go back as far as you like, although I don't think it would be desirable to let the player go back too far, since it starts to look like a new game within a game at some point. You want to limit it to prevent players from developing bad practices and dwelling on losses.

[wire_hall_medic]

[Edit: Removed a lot of words which were unnecessary for making the point]

My opinion is that games shouldn't force you to play boring, repetitive sections to get at the fun part (looking at you, ADOM); should give you the information necessary to make informed decisions; and shouldn't totally bone you with the RNG.  I like hard games, and I like the idea that I must deal with the consequences of my own actions.  But I'm not interested in taking responsibility for things beyond my control, nor being punished disproportionally to my choices.

If the game feels punishing don't fucking play it.