Sucess IS Boring

[kilravok]

Sucess IS Boring

Staring this thread in answer to

You know, that's a very good point. You should start a thread. Success -is- boring, dramatically. It's the striving that has value. How to do that in an open-world RPG without grinding, though?

The trick with multiplayer is to get the player who has just died, ( LIKE A FAILURE) back in the game and engaged as soon as possible. Punishment-without-punishment, as it were. You want death to have consequences, thus making it something to avoid. Likewise, you want the player to have as much steady fun as possible.

Day Z did a pretty good job of this for awhile, until hack central and PvP took over. Some lessons there.

in the "Please add multiplayer co-op thread http://www.cyberpunk.net/forum/en/threads/93-Please-add-multiplayer-co-op?p=12884&viewfull=1#post12884


The reason I say success is boring based on the very principle of RP and Story Telling. Without conflict, challenges and risk of failure, there is nothing worth playing, watching or reading. Would you read a book about somebody who just without problems gets through the day, never having to face difficulties or disappointments? Would Superman be as popular if there wasn't any Kryponite? Would you actually play PnP in the expectation that you can just waltz through without even having to try?

If we want excitement, adventure or just the thrill of a challenge, then we need the real threat of failure. If we know that we will be successful, no mater what, why would we even bother playing?
Sure, dieing and having to do everything again from the last savepoint is frustrating, sometimes even frustrating enough to throw the controller against the wall. But would we really play for more than ten minutes if we had the invulnerability, unlimited ammo and unlimited cash cheat codes active right from the start? I doubt it.

And to keep the risk of failing alive, we need to fail occasionally, but failing should not always mean dieing and restart from last safe.

Failing and Quest Lines
Failing means, you don't manage to do the mission, have to pay back the advance and will struggle for some time to get any new high profile contracts.
Failing means loosing the quest important item and having to go and get it back form whoever got it, and who is now expecting you, within a time limit before the contractor sets a bounty on your head.
Failing means that politician you had to bodyguard is dead and can no longer prevent the new law that would allow for senate members to be affiliated with corporations instead of parties, a law that would allow corps even more political power than they already have....
Failing means having to give up your safe house because every ganger in town, along with the security FBC of several corps found out where you live.
Success solves a quest, failing creates many new ones.

Failure and XP:
It is a well known fact in craft and any profession that actually involves more than just sitting behind a desk: You learn more from mistakes than from success. When you do something right, great, moving on. But if you do it wrong, you sit and ponder what went wrong and how to do it right.
It would be a good idea to have a system that gives you XP, dedicated to be used for the specific skill in question, when you fumble and suffer a critical fail, more XP than what you would get for a legendary success. Now, don't think that would invite people to just deliberately fail to get the XP...failing has consequences aside from being a lesson learned....

Failure and Fun:
As mentioned earlier, nobody would like Superman if there was no Kryptonite, the story of Achilles would be less heroic if he didn't have that heel.
To quoth the Green Goblin "What the people love more than a hero is, to watch their hero stumble, fail, die."
While it might be true that we are the heroes in the RPG, we are also, and much more so, the spectators watching the show. Even Lord of the Rings is pretty boring until Frodo is told what that ring is all about. Threat of bad events is what gives us adrenalin...without adrenal, life is boring.



Failure in an openworld RPG:
How to apply the dramaturgical effects of Failing in open world without grinding?
In open world RPG, especially MMO, people grind to get the experience levels, equipment and skills to move on to higher level threats, so that they don't fail, don't risk failing, in the next part of the map.
I am ashamed to admit, I have a WoW account, and I even enjoyed it, until the friend who got me into playing it and who was level wise far ahead of me, took me grinding and power-leveling. The game immediately became boring. Staying in one area until i t gives no points anymore and moving on to the next that still gives points but no danger...and all that without story...no thank you. Grinding is done to prevent failing
In CyberPunk however, the entire setting is not made for killing monsters behind every tree. There is no space for grinding, which is one of the reasons why it would not work as MMO anyways.
In a setting such as CyberPunk, you would have to take the consequence of failing a quest or restart form last safe point.
The consequence of failing is not always death.
Even if you are defeated in battle, the consequence might be increased fees for your trauma team contract, loosing the confidence of potential contract givers, waking up in the gutter with everything worth a dime gone, including your clothes and hardware, ending up in an interrogation cell, having the people who defeated you implant a cortical bomb to force you to betray your employer, .....
Grinding depends re-spawning of enemies or items....If you take that away, then you would sooner or later run out of grinding material and instead have C-SWAT on your arse. Even in Skyrim, grinding combat skills is difficult because enemies and monsters repawn very slowly...like, takes a month for an instance to repopulate. In CyberPunk every action needs to have a reaction.
Try as a hacker to grind your hacking skills in the same data fortress....you broke it once, you can do it again and keep doing it until it is no challenge anymore, right? Unlikely. It is more that after you broke it once, the security changes, after the second hack, that data fortress has security increased beyond your skills and you have a hit team kicking down your door.

That is at least how I see it...
Any other ideas and comments?

 

[Val3ri]

I mentioned in the other topic, that failing, rather than "mere" death, could mean "you're gonna spend x time at 50% physically and mentally, as the wounds are affecting you".

Dying also means that you might miss part of your equipment (or most of it), as someone maybe decided to check if it's worth it (and get it for free). Yes, if you're teaming with others, they might respect you and don't do that. But it's their personal choice. After all, in Cyberpunk, you don't have only friends, but people that team with you only because they need the help to survive and overcome a quest.

 

[kilravok]

The wounds affect you even if you don't die. You can survive and win the battle hands down and still suffer the penalties of that graze on your left temple. And lets not forget, damaged cyberware might not reduce your mental abilities and doesn't give you pain, but it doesn't heal either...you'll need a mechanic for that.

 

[wisdom000]

Success isn't boring... Success without effort is boring....

Succeeding at something that was difficult, or even near impossible, is awesome... in fact, the chance of success is the reason we do things in the first place, especially things that are hard.

Other than the basic premise of your thread title however, I agree with pretty much everything you said.

 

[Aditya]

Success isn't boring... Success without effort is boring....

Succeeding at something that was difficult, or even near impossible, is awesome... in fact, the chance of success is the reason we do things in the first place, especially things that are hard.

Other than the basic premise of your thread title however, I agree with pretty much everything you said.

I would like to say the same. I don't play MP myself but I do get your points.

 

[F34R3D]

This is one of the reasons I enjoyed iron man mode in X-Com. Knowing I couldn't reload made things a lot more intense.

 

[Sardukhar]

I dunno. I think frequent success is boring, even if it is earned.

Keep winning and it seems pretty inevitable.

I think you need failure, loss and defeat as contrast.

I liek the idea of failure-based XP, tapering off to make sure it's not an abused grinding mechanic.

 

[Val3ri]

I dunno. I think frequent success is boring, even if it is earned.

Keep winning and it seems pretty inevitable.

I think you need failure, loss and defeat as contrast.

I liek the idea of failure-based XP, tapering off to make sure it's not an abused grinding mechanic.

In my experience, part of the "it became boring" idea is exactly that, when you know you are going to succeed.

I know it' a bit out of topic, but that's why I love when one of my friends masters RuneQuest system. You can be the most powerful warrior on Earth, but the tiniest enemy does have the chance of getting you.

There is a difference when you're out there, doing a quest, you've got the equipment, you've done it before.. and yet, you don't know wht could go wrong, and put your planning upside down.

 

[zeithri]

The reason I say success is boring based on the very principle of RP and Story Telling. Without conflict, challenges and risk of failure, there is nothing worth playing, watching or reading. Would you read a book about somebody who just without problems gets through the day, never having to face difficulties or disappointments?

Are you the kind of person who get upset from reading spoilers and refuse to read the full book because of that?
The journey is more important than the end.

Would Superman be as popular if there wasn't any Kryponite?

Yes.

Would you actually play PnP in the expectation that you can just waltz through without even having to try?

Yes, because the thing is you don't know. Even if it is said to be a cakewalk mission, easy money, you cannot be 100% sure that that is true.

But would we really play for more than ten minutes if we had the invulnerability, unlimited ammo and unlimited cash cheat codes active right from the start? I doubt it.

Yes, we would. Have you never cheated in a game?
iddqd, idkfa, idclip, left-right-left-right-up-down-b-a-start, IGOTACIDPROOFBOOTS and so forth.
Die Hard Trilogy remains one of the games with the most hilarious of cheat codes ever to been put into a game for example.

And to keep the risk of failing alive, we need to fail occasionally, but failing should not always mean dieing and restart from last safe.

In certain games, all you have is 3 lives unless you acquire more. You get to the boss, the boss kicks your ass three times and you're booted back out to the start of the level or boss select screen. That is Megaman. Never played it? You should. Shadowrun on the snes has no save points, all you get is one life and if you didn't save at all in the game - It's game over. Difference is the Sega version of Shadowrun where the DocWagon will take 5000 nuyen of you everytime you die.

Failing and Quest Lines
-snip-

You're thinking of a dynamic system where killing the hobo at the end of the street will result in the permadeath of said hobo. Where NPC's will go out to the store to buy milk, and then go home. At least that's what I'd hope you're thinking about but I have a feeling you're only focusing on a very static mission system.

There's one other option you must consider; Giving up the mission.
Which you can do, again, in Shadowrun on Sega.

Failure and XP:
-snip-

This is true - except it's false because most people are too stupid to realize their mistakes
But in a more serious tone, No. This would not work. Ever played Fallout? How many of you in here ever took Jinxed Trait? Anyone?
"Causes more critical failures for your enemies - Only bad part is that now you too suffer the same fate!"

Using what you say here, people would jump to grab anything that would allow them to Fail more since that'd result in more EXP than Success, leadng to the good ol' metagaming thoughts of "I'll earn more by doing this."

Failure and Fun:
As mentioned earlier, nobody would like Superman if there was no Kryptonite, the story of Achilles would be less heroic if he didn't have that heel.
To quoth the Green Goblin "What the people love more than a hero is, to watch their hero stumble, fail, die."
While it might be true that we are the heroes in the RPG, we are also, and much more so, the spectators watching the show. Even Lord of the Rings is pretty boring until Frodo is told what that ring is all about. Threat of bad events is what gives us adrenalin...without adrenal, life is boring.

Again, Superman is not popular because of his weakness Kryptonite. Superman is popular because his character is interesting. At least that's my opinion regarding that just as I like Spiderman for being an ass. Oh I am sure the story of Achilles would still be popular - just that no one would refer to weaknesses as "Achilles Heel" anymore.

OKAY, NO, Now you're just talking out of your synthetic beard. The world of Middle Earth is HUGE, HUUUUGEE and would be interesting even if no one knew what powers the ring had. All you'd need to say is "This is a powerful ring and we can't let evil have it", but even so, it could even just be Frodo adventuring in the world without the ring and dodging dangers.

Failure in an openworld RPG:
How to apply the dramaturgical effects of Failing in open world without grinding?
In open world RPG, especially MMO, people grind to get the experience levels, equipment and skills to move on to higher level threats, so that they don't fail, don't risk failing, in the next part of the map.
I am ashamed to admit, I have a WoW account, and I even enjoyed it, until the friend who got me into playing it and who was level wise far ahead of me, took me grinding and power-leveling. The game immediately became boring. Staying in one area until i t gives no points anymore and moving on to the next that still gives points but no danger...and all that without story...no thank you. Grinding is done to prevent failing

I used to play World of Warcraft back in Vanilla. I loved Vanilla, vanilla holds a very good part of my heart. THen came Burning Crusade which raped the lore, then the other expansions which raped it harder with a corkscrew because Metzen were snorting cocain so hard up his nostrils that his eyes had popped out.

You write that you are ashamed to admitt that, but what makes you ashamed of that?

In CyberPunk however, the entire setting is not made for killing monsters behind every tree. There is no space for grinding, which is one of the reasons why it would not work as MMO anyways.
In a setting such as CyberPunk, you would have to take the consequence of failing a quest or restart form last safe point.
The consequence of failing is not always death.

Again, I must take up the example of Shadowrun which uses a system of KARMA. Both the Snes and Sega version uses a different way of it but sorta the same. If you have a Body Stat of 3 and want to get it up to 4, you need to invest 3 Karma to get it higher. To invest from 4 to 5, 4 karma. And so forth. Skills being more expensive to Karma-up since they cost double. To get say Firearms or Computer up from 10 to 11, you need 22 Karma.

Apart from this, you also need Nuyen, money. In the snes version, there's a lot more people trying to kill you and each drops about 20-50 nuyen (later enemies go for say 100-150 nuyen) and on average it takes 3-4 enemies to slay to get +1 karma to your karma pool. In the Sega game, it's suppose to only be the Street Samurai who can get karma from fighting which I guess is 3-4 enemies for a karma but not sure, otherwise the main way to get karma and nuyen is to do Shadowruns. This is the same in the pnp game (except ofc the game master can award Karma for say, you doing something exceptional like convincing a person of something amazing or so).

If we look towards the Cyberpunk 2020 system (Don't have the rulebooks around me), I'm pretty sure that game has similiar rules regarding how to improve your skills / stats and most importantly - earning cash. Thus, doing missions = Grind.

Even if you are defeated in battle, the consequence might be increased fees for your trauma team contract, loosing the confidence of potential contract givers, waking up in the gutter with everything worth a dime gone, including your clothes and hardware, ending up in an interrogation cell, having the people who defeated you implant a cortical bomb to force you to betray your employer, .....
Grinding depends re-spawning of enemies or items....If you take that away, then you would sooner or later run out of grinding material and instead have C-SWAT on your arse. Even in Skyrim, grinding combat skills is difficult because enemies and monsters repawn very slowly...like, takes a month for an instance to repopulate. In CyberPunk every action needs to have a reaction.
Try as a hacker to grind your hacking skills in the same data fortress....you broke it once, you can do it again and keep doing it until it is no challenge anymore, right? Unlikely. It is more that after you broke it once, the security changes, after the second hack, that data fortress has security increased beyond your skills and you have a hit team kicking down your door.

That is at least how I see it...
Any other ideas and comments?

Here's a question for you.
Why, would people implant you with a cranial bomb to make you betray your employers?
Because that to be makes no sense. It'd be more likely that they'd prevent you from ever working again such as the case with Case in Neuromancer, as done by his own employers.

And increasing security, that's not the easiest at all. They're "attempted" hacked all the time, and we can make the assumption that most who try either jack out, or die trying. I am not saying it's a bad idea, just saying that it takes time to upgrade ones security measures and the chances are that they don't even know you're there if you are a great Decker.

Overall, I don't agree.
This is a future where there are gangs, there are corp security, and there are assassins.

-ponder-

Way of the Samurai 2 did it very good..

 

[Sardukhar]

All I got from that is something about using cheat codes in games. Also Shadowrun stuff. And missions=grinding. Jinxed in Fallout was fun, but it didn't change your odds enough to be worth a slot. Not to mention in Fallout you failed enough anyway. Fallout 3 was pretty good, too, and always succeeding in that game sucked as well.

Your other points I'll let someone else hit at, if they want to.

 

[blank_redge]

RE: grinding

Hm. I think Borderlands has a pretty good XP mechanic, for "bad guys" and such; the foes scale, depending on your current experience level. You *can* wander off to a part of the map where the baddies are higher level / tougher, but you'll most likely get killed, if you're not high enough level to deal with 'em.

Like many other games with levels and an XP system (I'm looking at you, Diablo 2 and WoW,) leveling in Borderlands can be broken by having a crazy-high level character come in and do all the "heavy lifting" for teh n0oblarz.

If any kind of multiplayer / co-op is introduced, they could circumvent this by having the player who takes the killing shot getting the XP. Even if the higher level character voluntarily nerfed their weapons / went hand-to-hand, to "soften up" the baddies for the noobie players to finish off, it should still reduce the gap between the player doing the heavy lifting, and the noobies.

 

[wisdom000]

All I got from that is something about using cheat codes in games. Also Shadowrun stuff. And missions=grinding. Jinxed in Fallout was fun, but it didn't change your odds enough to be worth a slot. Not to mention in Fallout you failed enough anyway. Fallout 3 was pretty good, too, and always succeeding in that game sucked as well.

Your other points I'll let someone else hit at, if they want to.

I read it... but it will be another hour before my brain recognizes what it read...

 

[Sydanyo]

The most fun I've ever had while playing a game with character development online with other people was in a MUD. First I'd spend hours (days, really) grinding monsters to get experience and levels, as well as gear to buff my character, and then me and my friends would go raiding a guild or PK people on the streets. The thing is though, it'd just end up with us dying repeatedly in the hands of other players, losing experience, losing levels and losing all the gear we were carrying every time.

In other words, complete and utter waste of time as far as character development goes, but the most fun I've ever had playing a game where there is character development. Grind up to level 50 during the week or past two weeks, then die from PK to back to level 20-30. Awesome stuff. We may not have gotten to high levels, but we sure got a reputation in the MUD.

Every game since has felt like having training wheels on, not being able to lose much at all, and never having to really reverse your advancement. A bit like "everyone's a winner!"

Oh well.

 

[Sardukhar]

Try Day Z?

 

[Sydanyo]

Try Day Z?

It has persistent (as in not reset when you log off or something like that) character development, and you can lose it all? Levels and such? I do love me some zombies...

 

[Sardukhar]

No, it has character development in the sense of gear only. Gear and map knowledge. Which takes a good while to get. You lose it all and the travel time to wherever you were holed up, when you die and go back to the beach.

But, I should warn you it has a certain amount of hackers these days. You may want to wait for the stand alone version being developed currently.

That said, I had the most fun and fear of dying in Day Z than I've had in years. It was much like a Roguelike in that.

 

[wisdom000]

The most fun I've ever had while playing a game with character development online with other people was in a MUD. First I'd spend hours (days, really) grinding monsters to get experience and levels, as well as gear to buff my character, and then me and my friends would go raiding a guild or PK people on the streets. The thing is though, it'd just end up with us dying repeatedly in the hands of other players, losing experience, losing levels and losing all the gear we were carrying every time.

In other words, complete and utter waste of time as far as character development goes, but the most fun I've ever had playing a game where there is character development. Grind up to level 50 during the week or past two weeks, then die from PK to back to level 20-30. Awesome stuff. We may not have gotten to high levels, but we sure got a reputation in the MUD.

Every game since has felt like having training wheels on, not being able to lose much at all, and never having to really reverse your advancement. A bit like "everyone's a winner!"

Oh well.

How is that character development?

It sounds like just leveling up and getting new shit...

 

[netra]

How is that character development?

It sounds like just leveling up and getting new shit...

And then someone with better shit or a lot of people with equal shit come along and floor you. Back to square one.

I think between you and me we may have deciphered his post.

 

[kilravok]

The most fun I've ever had while playing a game with character development online with other people was in a MUD. First I'd spend hours (days, really) grinding monsters to get experience and levels, as well as gear to buff my character, and then me and my friends would go raiding a guild or PK people on the streets. The thing is though, it'd just end up with us dying repeatedly in the hands of other players, losing experience, losing levels and losing all the gear we were carrying every time.

In other words, complete and utter waste of time as far as character development goes, but the most fun I've ever had playing a game where there is character development. Grind up to level 50 during the week or past two weeks, then die from PK to back to level 20-30. Awesome stuff. We may not have gotten to high levels, but we sure got a reputation in the MUD.

Every game since has felt like having training wheels on, not being able to lose much at all, and never having to really reverse your advancement. A bit like "everyone's a winner!"

Oh well.

Sounds to me almost like those trolls who camp at respawn points and bump off all the noobs just for the lolz of senseless PK. I have quit more games because of that kind of players than because of high level boredom.

 

[wisdom000]

And then someone with better shit or a lot of people with equal shit come along and floor you. Back to square one.

I think between you and me we may have deciphered his post.

Ayup....

In other words, the game was about shit development, not character development... which has its place I guess....