Mechanical Faithfulness to Cyberpunk 2020...

[KakitaTatsumaru]

One problem about that design: it makes making a "killing everything" character overall more efficient that a "full skill test" character:
If the "full skill test" character fail due to bad RNG, then he have to fight, something that he is not prepared to, while for the "killing everything" character you can try RNG as a full bonus as if it works it just makes things even easier and if not you're just down to what you do best anyway (and isn't affected by RNG).

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

One problem about that design: it makes making a "killing everything" character overall more efficient that a "full skill test" character:
If the "full skill test" character fail due to bad RNG, then he have to fight

Not a problem if it’s a sidemission; you just have to give it a pass. Failure is something the game should allow. And I would advocate that combat is a series of skilltests too. Every round fired is one (what ever the proper implementation there might be). A combat character lacks all the advantages the full skilltest character has elsewhere, his best/only choice is combat; and obviously there needs to be missions where combat isn’t THE solution at any point. Combat SHOULD NOT be a default solution, just A solution where it fits.

And once again, it’s a matter of mission design. Critical path has to ensure the player gets through !!at some point!! (sometimes it just is the case that you need a better character all around the get forward - and like I said earlier, the game should inform the player what he is getting himself into at least to a certain degree, so if you accept a mission blindly and do not have an appropriate character, you only have yourself to blame if you get stuck and have to backtrack), the rest does not have to adhere to the players specific character choices with as much leeway.

The game is not obligated to let you win.

 

[Suhiira]

Yeah, the skillchecks in the critical path are meant to offer specific reactivity to your chosen characterbuild, not to halt your progress altogether.

I think you should revise that to "should be intended", all to often in games they seem to be progress halting.
Poor design 101.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

I think you should revise that to "should be intended"

Sure. I thought that goes without saying.

 

[KakitaTatsumaru]

and obviously there needs to be missions where combat isn’t THE solution at any point. Combat SHOULD NOT be a default solution, just A solution where it fits.

I like how you thinks, but it sounds an awful lot like hearing someone making a speech about world peace: I hope that it goes that way but know it won't.
You can quote that for posterity: Every mission in this game will be doable just by killing people, without use of any other skill.
I'll be pleased even if I'm wrong anyway, so it's a win-win situation for me.

The game is not obligated to let you win.

The game have made as a first marketing focus to appeal to FPS players out there, so I'll have to disagree with your assumption. Every mission will be doable by entering a killing spree.

Post automatically merged: Oct 24, 2018

Back on the "RNG skill check VS Skill gates" topic, I just remembered how White Wolf games have a rule about a bit of the two to avoid stupid situations:
-Normally, you roll dices.
-But when your stats+skills are high enough, you can still roll of course to try to have the best results, but you can also go for an garanteed basic success instead (wich is a good option for moments you should absolutely not screw up things). From a roleplay POV it's the same difference as trying to get the best results no matter what and doing things as safely as possible.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

I like how you thinks, but it sounds an awful lot like hearing someone making a speech about world peace: I hope that it goes that way but know it won't.

That's pretty much what I'm doing (deliberately). I have no expectations that any of my ramblings here have any effect on anything. I mean, I can't even get the handful of people posting here to agree with them, how could I convince a multimillion dollar corporation?

But I do think it is worth saying and arguing stuff that otherwise probably wouldn't be said or argued, at least to length. Who knows.

You can quote that for posterity: Every mission in this game will be doable just by killing people, without use of any other skill.

Oh, I agree it is very very likely. Believe you me. There's two branches of solos alone. That already implies heavy focus on combat.

And that's also why I'm voicing my distaste.

The game have made as a first marketing focus to appeal to FPS players out there

Based on what's seen, that's certainly true. But what CDPR themselves say is in conflict with that. And if it wasn't, I'd have left long ago to greener pastures among the indies that still at least try to appeal to my demographic.

I just remembered how White Wolf games have a rule about a bit of the two to avoid stupid situations:
-Normally, you roll dices.
-But when your stats+skills are high enough, you can still roll of course to try to have the best results, but you can also go for an garanteed basic success instead

That sounds like an interesting system. Risking it to improve the guaranteed success' for easy tasks. I'm just curious how that would actually work in practice and outside bartering/negotiation dialog.

 

[Snowflakez]

That's pretty much what I'm doing (deliberately). I have no expectations that any of my ramblings here have any effect on anything; I can't even get the handful of people posting here to agree with them.

But I do think it is worth saying stuff that otherwise probably wouldn't be said. Who knows.



Oh, I agree it is very very likely. Believe you me. There's two branches of solos alone. That already implies heavy focus on combat.

And that's also why I'm voicing my distaste.



Based on what's seen, that's certainly true. But what CDPR themselves say is in conflict with that. And if it wasn't, I'd have left long ago to greener pastures among the indies that still at least try to appeal to my demographic.



That sounds like an interesting system. Risking it to improve the guaranteed success' for easy tasks. I'm just curious how that would actually work in practice and outside bartering/negotiation dialog.

I usually warm up to your ideas after discussing them long enough. There are still a few holdouts, but I've come around a bit more.

Also, worth noting, the game isn't just in "Somewhat" early development, but pretty dang early development, according to an interview with DualShockers. So I don't quite share Kakita's pessimism; yet.

They 100% refuse to commit to any mechanical changes we've seen so far. Every single question regarding specifics is answered so vaguely that they could almost wind up with a bloody puzzle game.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

Also, worth noting, the game isn't just in "Somewhat" early development, but pretty dang early development, according to an interview with DualShockers. So I don't quite share Kakita's pessimism; yet.

It's just the way these things tend to roll, is all. I wasn't always this cynical and pessimistic, you know.

 

[SigilFey]

But that's just what it is, faulty design. The system's not to blame for that.

Most assuredly -- and of course, this is just my personal bias against RNG. (It's very hard to appreciate something that's constantly sticking tacks in your eye and insisting it's "fun".)

I mean, it doesn't really sound good if absolutely everyone is able to get through absolutely everything.

Which is why I think gated is the best option. Not every character will get through everything. In fact, if you're a certain type of character, you quite simply can't do certain things. But if I am that certain type of character, what purpose does it serve to make me "roll"? Why is the game laying tracks for a certain playstyle, then leaving the results up to chance? It makes little sense. (Note, too: I'm addressing software games. Tabletop / board games are a different bag. That's a shared activity.)

Something like lifting a large object out of the way is a bit more binary in nature. Do you have the strength (or determination to summon it) to move the object out of the way? This is more of a yes or no. Wiring a light switch fits a similar theme. If you know how to wire a light switch you... know how to wire a light switch. If this task is performed properly and you check your work it's more of a binary yes or no. Yeah, even this stuff could have variable outcomes. Still, I don't see how making it reliant on RNG necessarily improves the game play.

Exactly. This is why I'm really considering the auto-fail at low level, need to roll for middling levels, and auto-succeed at high level. If I start a game with the "wiring" skill, I can succeed at wiring every dang time. No rolls. Ever. I can succeed at wiring two things simultaneously in the dark. I am all about the wiring. If I start the game with some general knowledge about wiring, then it's a bit hit or miss while I'm actually learning how to do it. If I'm completely unskilled, I basically stare at the wires and have no idea where to begin. Need to figure something else out. Don't know the first thing about wiring.

But the fix shouldn’t be ”leave the faulty design and change the system to seemingly support it”.

Absolutely true. But it's just as easy to argue that the design is trying to use the wrong systems to achieve its goals.

Same for rewiring the light switch... you might get a jolt, you might short circuit it. And again the range of positive outcomes... Doing it faster?

Or lifting that heavy object... you might break your back by trying to lift it wrong. Or sprain your hand, or drop it on your foot as your grip slips. And once again the positives...?

In real life, I don't make such mistakes. I know how to switch the breakers off, so I'm not working with live wires. I don't start carrying a couch on a staircase and discover halfway down, "Uh-oh, a totally unforeseen problem!" That's because I know what to look for ahead of time. These aren't things left up to chance. I think the main issue here is...why would it be necessary to roll a check for this? If a character works with electronics, and the player figured out that rewiring something was an option... Done. Is there some overwhelming reason the character would not be able to succeed? What's the point of making the player fail for absolutely no other reason than trying to use their character's chosen skillset and play their chosen role?

Many games want you to believe that, because a random number came up...your master-level swordsman dropped his weapon and cut his own leg. It's ridiculous, annoying, completely illogical, and ultimately pointless. It's often not there to reward players or add anything to the game; it's there to punish players and come up with arbitrary reasons to prevent their progress.

My main gripe is, like Sigi said, when you just get some really crappy luck and then it's kinda an auto-lose, reload-the-game type of situation.

This is where I'll come back to tabletop vs. software (especially SP). On tabletop, while trying to envision your character in action, sitting around a table with other, thinking, creative human beings, having no idea where things may go, and being able to adapt emergently (<-- This is now a word. I have spoken; it is so.) to any weird situation that happens...

...is a very different playing field than being forced play the same scenarios over and over again simply because you keep rolling snake-eyes to determine whether your high-level cleric successfully heals a stubbed toe. What makes much more sense is letting me use the abilities (that I purposefully chose) to experience the pre-determined outcome(s) of the game. Instead of wasting my time by forcing me to reload until I get lucky enough or quit out of frustration and boredom -- challenge my character's playstyle with intelligent level design, sensible scenarios with multiple solutions, and challenging choices.

So, a more rewarding, engaging, and intelligent system (IMO) for software games is to have a cleric auto-succceed at healing spells. They're a bloody cleric. They can definitely heal three injured people...or one mortally wounded one. But there are 5 wounded and 3 dying. Who will it be? What order? Force them to consider the options and consequences.

Instead of, "...Oops! Failed the roll. Your spell fizzles. The next spell fails, too. Huh-huh-huh -- ur cleric sucks. Quickload again?"

If a player chooses to play a cleric, then it might be a good idea for them to be able to reliably do cleric stuff.

 

[Suhiira]

That sounds like an interesting system. Risking it to improve the guaranteed success' for easy tasks. I'm just curious how that would actually work in practice and outside bartering/negotiation dialog.

A Whitewolf game, specifically Vampire: Masquerade is where I had my "Best worst die roll ever" moment.

My young vampire, who actually had reasonable hand-to-hand skills, went to coldcock a civilian who'd seen something they shouldn't have in order to drag them back to a more senior vamp who had the ability to screw with peoples memory, and I rolled what the game refers to as a "quadruple botch" (basically a critical, critical failure) while crossing a parking lot, something I could have easily done automatically, but nooooooo ... I had to be flashy and try to vault a parked car rather then just go around. One fatal (for a mortal, not a vampire) skull fracture later someone else delt with the civilian and the rest of the team had to drag my body into a dark place so she could "rise from the dead" the next day.

 

[Snowflakez]

A Whitewolf game, specifically Vampire: Masquerade is where I had my "Best worst die roll ever" moment.

My young vampire, who actually had reasonable hand-to-hand skills, went to coldcock a civilian who'd seen something they shouldn't have in order to drag them back to a more senior vamp who had the ability to screw with peoples memory, and I rolled what the game refers to as a "quadruple botch" (basically a critical, critical failure) while crossing a parking lot, something I could have easily done automatically, but nooooooo ... I had to be flashy and try to vault a parked car rather then just go around. One fatal (for a mortal, not a vampire) skull fracture later someone else delt with the civilian and the rest of the team had to drag my body into a dark place so she could "rise from the dead" the next day.

That is awesome.

My luck in PnPs has always been shite. Enter a room, try to open a door, fail perception check, it's a mimic. Enter a room, fail perception check, get grabbed by a zombie. Proceed to fail 3 "break away" strength checks in a row. Cast "Fly" and soar onto a roof to rain Eldritch Blasts down on some corrupt guardsmen. Failed stealth check, made too much noise, 3 guys with nets and knives come up to the roof and begin stabbing me. Fail every single strength check to break free. I eventually decided to just roll off the roof and take the falling damage.

Me constantly getting grappled by random crap became a running joke in our group.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

Which is why I think gated is the best option. Not every character will get through everything. In fact, if you're a certain type of character, you quite simply can't do certain things.

Well, you see... This is true to a point, up to certain amounts of skill level, BUT it just locks everyone down to their designated paths if you don't allow them to even try something out of their prestige (even against very unlikely odds). This robs a good chunk of intrigue and excitement out of the mission and makes it far more straight forward.

But if I am that certain type of character, what purpose does it serve to make me "roll"? Why is the game laying tracks for a certain playstyle, then leaving the results up to chance? It makes little sense.

It's about the percievable experience. If you don't allow failure, success matters less. And it's about roleplaying and organic depiction of the character who is neither rigidly infallible nor completely hopeless against (all) the obstacles s/he faces; the world isn't binary like that. It creates a situation, where the player has to actually roleplay the character and accept his weaknesses and fallibilities and adapt to the situation the character gets in. It's a much more diverse and positively tense experience when you can not tell you are or are not going to succeed. And also, the skills are less gamey if their effect is fluid rather than static.

But it's just as easy to argue that the design is trying to use the wrong systems to achieve its goals.

How so? If you notice mid quest that the gates are too high up and block your passage, your just as stuck as you were with a failed roll. But with the roll, at least your character had a fighting chance.

In real life, I don't make such mistakes.

Never? I wish I was you. It's easy to say one doesn't make any mistakes, until they happen. Don't take the examples too literally, they are just there to underline the point.

These aren't things left up to chance.

There are always chances.

Many games want you to believe that, because a random number came up...your master-level swordsman dropped his weapon and cut his own leg. It's ridiculous, annoying, completely illogical, and ultimately pointless.

No. The sword didn't drop because a random number came up. The roll is an abstraction of something that happened that caused the sword to drop. You fill in the blanks if there is no textual or visual explanation.

All failure is pointless and annoying, but failure still happens. And it elevates the sense of success. That's just how the world works. It's not illogical either, quite the opposite. What is illogical is no failures at all.

 

[Snowflakez]

Screw you both. You both make great points.

On one hand, @kofeiiniturpa is right in that hard gates prevent players from trying new things - after all, I'm no trained gunman, but if the situation demands it I'll do my best. Same goes for fixing a car or repairing a light box.

On the other hand, I think @SigilFey is correct that it feels bad and nonsensical for a trained swordsmen to randomly drop his sword, or for a professional electrician to completely botch a job.

There's probably a middle ground here, and I think Sigi may have hit on it. Auto-success or failure at low or high enough skill levels, RNG for the middle. Perhaps not ideal for either party, but such is the nature of compromise.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

Perhaps not ideal for either party, but such is the nature of compromise.

Dunno about SIgil, witnessing his hatred for rolls (which is similiar to my disdain for deterministic checks, that I consider utterly boring and completely devoid of any excitement or intrigue), but I'd be fine with that, at least under certain conditions. I've even suggested it myself because it's pretty much how 2020 works too (perhaps not to the letter, I don't remember all the intricasies off hand, but close enough).

Wasteland 2 also had it that way. The higher the skill got, the higher the chances for low difficulty checks got (obviously, duh) until they started hitting 100%. And with low skill, very high difficulties were out of the range (impossible).

 

[Sardukhar]

There should be a certain amount of random for two reasons:

1. That's life, kids. Cpunk is based on realism and luck is realistic. Good and bad. Yes , yes I know, videogames are all about empowering you in contrast to the harshness that is real life blah blah. Weakness. Go back to the elves and singing birds. This is Cyberpunk.

2. Skill is no guarantee of success at a task. It's literally in the corebook and it sums up an important part of the Cyberpunk ethos, which is always partly a tragedy no matter how well you planned: "Even the best of us screws up sometimes. Even You. - The Management." Under the section discussing critical fails, appropriately.

It's a small chance, but, yes, electricians screw up on breakers - or the breaker is faulty. I've done it, yep, even though I knew exactly what to do. I make mistakes driving - I'm a licensed and decades-experienced professional driver. My wife, a trained paramedic, can tell you horror stories. Our friends - carpenters, soldiers, cops, doctors, EMTs - highly trained people, they all make mistakes, some of them really really bad ones. And sometimes we don't make mistakes and fail anyway and are frustrated and baffled.

Sometimes the dice just go another way. That's life.

The point of skills is to minimize that happening - and more importantly in critical situations, to have back-up solutions.

Every pro fails - the good ones expect and plan for it.

 

[Snowflakez]

There should be a certain amount of random for two reasons:

1. That's life, kids. Cpunk is based on realism and luck is realistic. Good and bad. Yes , yes I know, videogames are all about empowering you in contrast to the harshness that is real life blah blah. Weakness. Go back to the elves and singing birds. This is Cyberpunk.

2. Skill is no guarantee of success at a task. It's literally in the corebook and it sums up an important part of the Cyberpunk ethos, which is always partly a tragedy no matter how well you planned: "Even the best of us screws up sometimes. Even You. - The Management." Under the section discussing critical fails, appropriately.

It's a small chance, but, yes, electricians screw up on breakers - or the breaker is faulty. I've done it, yep, even though I knew exactly what to do. I make mistakes driving - I'm a licensed and decades-experienced professional driver. My wife, a trained paramedic, can tell you horror stories. Our friends - carpenters, soldiers, cops, doctors, EMTs - highly trained people, they all make mistakes, some of them really really bad ones. And sometimes we don't make mistakes and fail anyway and are frustrated and baffled.

Sometimes the dice just go another way. That's life.

The point of skills is to minimize that happening - and more importantly in critical situations, to have back-up solutions.

Every pro fails - the good ones expect and plan for it.

Sure, but how much random is "a certain amount"?

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

how much random is "a certain amount"?

It's random.

 

[Sardukhar]

Sure, but how much random is "a certain amount"?

THAT is the real question, isn't it.

Not very goddamn much as your skills go up.

Critical Fail: 1 out of 10 is an autofail or roll-again situation. That means ballpark 2 auto-fails per session if a busy skill-session and not heavy RP instead. I also tend to not have rolls unless under stress, so that's a factor. You aren't going to crit fail opening your car door, as the corebook points out.

You can spend Luck to avoid this, of course, but even so, I use a second die roll 50/50 chance to see if it's an auto fail, so about 1/20.

One auto-failure in 20, before the player spends Luck, seems to work out for us. That's auto failures. You can still roll and have to add your skills in and fail from not being good enough of course.

Skill based failures it really depends on the skill. In the 2020 system, Skill Level 5 is generally competent. 6 is Professional ( 6: actually the skill level a programmer or dancer, for example, is described as being professional).

So if you have average stats of 5 and you are competent, you will automatically succeed at Easy tasks ( providing you don't roll that 1/20 critical fail) and about half the time, without gear or preparation you will succeed at Average tasks, just "winging it". With some gear and some prep time, you ( Made Up Average Stats Competent Skill guy) will automatically succeed at Average tasks and have a 50% chance with Difficult tasks on your first try.

As you might guess, if you are talented, like above-average stats and cyberenhanced with good gear, well, Difficult tasks become Easy pretty fast.

So a skilled expert with good gear should hard fail, under pressure, before spending his Luck, maaaybe 1/20 times on Difficult tasks. If the pressure isn't too great, if he's unwounded and undistracted, if he has good gear and some prep time.

In the real world, that expert, if for example he knows it's a dangerous or critical task, spends his Luck and makes sure he doesn't auto fail. So, he can only auto fail when he runs out of Luck. Less than 1/100 times.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

You aren't going to crit fail opening your car door

Well, I've had a key snap inside the lock and the door handle rip off. I'd call those crit fails.

Winters are amazing.

 

[Sardukhar]

Well, I've had a key snap inside the lock and the door handle rip off. I'd call those crit fails.

Winters are amazing.

I'd call that lack of maintenance and preparation.