All that would be good if the software was a Game Master. What is is not.
When you fail, you GM may easily throw you another hook for another "quest". It will be another nice game session, rolling dices, drinking beers and somewhat straying far away from the intended plot. But the GM is talented and everything runs smoothly. The NPC laugh or pity you for your past failure and the PCs move on to something else.
That is simply not possible in a video game because the GM is limited. It has limited options and limited scenes / stories for you.
Let's say you play your character as a car racing fan, whose dream is to be the first to drive that freaking BMW from outer space supercar. As a GM, you may conceive plots for hours of fun just from that (stealing the car, infiltrate BMW for sneak view, try to corrupt someone to get inside the fab....). A video game will NEVER do that. Simply because you can't code a story arc for any hobby / passion / center of interest for thousands of players.
Just consider what is called a RPG in video games industry : character levelling and stuff gathering.
MMORPG : World of Warcraft. Where is the RPG ? Where is the involvement of the characters in what they are actually doing ? (and please, don't mention the social interaction on a chat channel as RPG : just play with barbie dolls instead).
I want romances, I want stories, I wnat colorful and likable NPCs, just to get involved in the world I'm dwelling in. I want to feel sad or joyfull. I want to think about the outcome of what I am doing and which faction I'm siding with (and betray later).
So is success boring ?
Easy success is boring. Overcoming odds is not.
Number crunching a character is boring. Gathering stuff is boring (i.e. : farming).
Winning without peril is to triumph without glory.
When you fail, you GM may easily throw you another hook for another "quest". It will be another nice game session, rolling dices, drinking beers and somewhat straying far away from the intended plot. But the GM is talented and everything runs smoothly. The NPC laugh or pity you for your past failure and the PCs move on to something else.
That is simply not possible in a video game because the GM is limited. It has limited options and limited scenes / stories for you.
Let's say you play your character as a car racing fan, whose dream is to be the first to drive that freaking BMW from outer space supercar. As a GM, you may conceive plots for hours of fun just from that (stealing the car, infiltrate BMW for sneak view, try to corrupt someone to get inside the fab....). A video game will NEVER do that. Simply because you can't code a story arc for any hobby / passion / center of interest for thousands of players.
Just consider what is called a RPG in video games industry : character levelling and stuff gathering.
MMORPG : World of Warcraft. Where is the RPG ? Where is the involvement of the characters in what they are actually doing ? (and please, don't mention the social interaction on a chat channel as RPG : just play with barbie dolls instead).
I want romances, I want stories, I wnat colorful and likable NPCs, just to get involved in the world I'm dwelling in. I want to feel sad or joyfull. I want to think about the outcome of what I am doing and which faction I'm siding with (and betray later).
So is success boring ?
Easy success is boring. Overcoming odds is not.
Number crunching a character is boring. Gathering stuff is boring (i.e. : farming).
Winning without peril is to triumph without glory.
Nicely put. Did you steal it or was it one of your own? I could Google it, but nah.
Overcoming odds is fun - but if you keep doing it, then you're not really overcoming the odds at all, are you? Just realising how you'd mis-calculated those odds.
Ten guys coming at you might have initially seemed crazy-challenging, but if you defeat them handily and THEN go on to seamlessly infilitrate their base of operations and THEN extract without being badly wounded or dying..and THEN do something similarly unlikely the next mission..
maybe things just weren't as tough as they seemed.
I can tell you, success IS boring... failing is awesome, it forces you to be creative in so many ways... like knowing the nutritional value of toothpaste, and whether it is best to spread on the saltine style or the butter style crackers you grabbed pocketfulls of the last time someone else took you to diner.
Failure in dating is even more awesome... not only does it teach you to make up wild stories, but it also teaches you the erotic uses of pretty much every item in your house.... and it makes your forearms MIGHTY.....
Failure at hygeine.... sure that just ties into the above failure fun, but it also means that no one will ever mug you because your crotch smells like an explosion went off in a Parmesan factory and you get to name your parasites...
Success is lame, it doesn't teach you anything.... failure is fucking hardcore metal....
Failure in dating is even more awesome... not only does it teach you to make up wild stories, but it also teaches you the erotic uses of pretty much every item in your house.... and it makes your forearms MIGHTY.....
Failure at hygeine.... sure that just ties into the above failure fun, but it also means that no one will ever mug you because your crotch smells like an explosion went off in a Parmesan factory and you get to name your parasites...
Success is lame, it doesn't teach you anything.... failure is fucking hardcore metal....
Not really sure..can't..forearms...urk?
I think you just crotch-sploded the whole argument.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14954
I translated it roughly ...
That's a nice syllogism (and a nice James Bond synopsis).
Your successes are in fact other's failures. So they should get better and better and, in the end, stomp you everytime you cross their path....
Yeah, your successes are others' failures. Which has always been kind of the glaring weakness for me in most videogames and RPGs - you shouldn't keep beating the odds unless you really underestimated the risk or you are careful to never be in a situation where the odds are against you.
Sort-of side note: my cop brother in law told me that in a hostage/siege situation, doctrine is to have something like 6-1 odds on the other guys. Overwhelming force.
Sort-of side note: my cop brother in law told me that in a hostage/siege situation, doctrine is to have something like 6-1 odds on the other guys. Overwhelming force.
In Video Games, success is mandatory.
Failure as an objective may not be acceptable, except because the story (plot / quest) requires it (If you fail, then try again ^^).
Failure is frustrating and no-one develop a game to frustrate the gamers who will not buy it (except masochist).
"You like to loose ? Buy my game !" Yeah, right...
In RPG, and as a GM, I can manage any situation to have the PCs fail one way of another, with light or heavy consequences for them. Is it fun ? For my sadistic pleasure, yes it is. For my players ? I highly doubt that.
History is full of stories overcoming the odds. If failure was a rule, there would be no word such as "lucky" or "miraculous".
About you sort of side note :
When is such a situation considered a failure ? All hostages dead or a few or none ? All officers dead or a few or none ? all perps dead or a few or none ?
A journalist will certainly not have the same point of view as the police officer, or a victim's relative ...
Oh bollocks to all of this... if there is no chance of failure, then there is no thrill to the success. The idea that success is mandatory gets in the way of so many games its not even funny, and that idea has absolutely NO place in a tabletop game.
Seriously, what kind of game do you run?
In a tabletop game, if success is mandatory, then why the hell would you even bother playing... why roll dice ever, if the outcome is always going to be success. Why not just let the GM sit back and tell you a bedtime story.
There should always be a way to succeed, yes, but having a way to succeed does not mean the characters will do it. If the objective is to steal a truck full of the latest Raven Microcyb hardware, so the teams fixer can flip it on the black market.... if they van gets away, well that's just a lesson learned for the next heist, when that shipment of Malorian weapons is due for delivery to the showroom down at Nakajimo Plaza. If a players dies, tough shit, roll up a new character. If one character goes to prison, tough shit, roll up a new character. If all the characters go to prison, well, you have two choices, everyone rolls up new characters, or you slide on your orange onesies and get ready for a prison based campaign... because you are the idiots who screwed up.
The idea that you have to succeed in video games at every mission has been holding video games back for years. I want a video game where my character can fail... and that failure has consequences. If Sonny Vito wants me to eliminate his rival mob boss for control of the Northside Docks, and I fail, I want that to mean in retaliation for the failed hit, maybe they take out a contract on Sonny, and me as well.... then if I fail to protect Sonny, well screw me, all the missions he was gonna give me, right out the window... maybe the Yaks or Russians are hiring... well maybe not the Russians, those dudes are fucked up...
You don't want to live with those consequences in a video game... fine, that's what save points are for.
The idea that you can't fail has never been so apparently unfun, as in the last Prince Of Persia game on PS3, where it was literally impossible to die... ever... even when you were trying to kill yourself.... Never has a game been so utterly boring.
This is the kind of gaming that only corporates and house wives and Heidi Jackson would find suitable for a tabletop game, and was the attitude behind DnD 4E... That damn sure ain't Cyberpunk... Where it's not success that is the measure of a character, but instead how much a character manages not to screw up too badly.
Life in Cyberpunk is measured in the cost of a single bullet.... even yours.
As I said : IN VIDEO GAMES. Read again.
Besides, I'm not saying that success has to be easy. I just say that no video game is built purprosely on failures (generally because failures is not really an option). You fail? Just reload.
I would be delighted of an organic storytelling, always adapted to the outcome of any plot or subplot. But you know what ? It is a MACHINE we are playing with, not an actual GM, and all the decisions of the players cannot be anticipated, nor all the results of their failures.
Success isn't mandatory in a video game at all. In PvP, for example, failure is quite common. In linear games such as SPec Ops the Line, failure was the point of the plot - even while you succeeded in your endeavours, all was lost.
During gameplay, failure is constant and only a reload can help you. But you've still failed. I'd probably say that if you want to succeed in a video game, persistence is mandatory.
In any kind of Ironman/Insane death-resets-the-game game mode, it's quite possible you'll never finish the game at all. I don't know if I'd describe that as success.
I think organic storytelling is certainly possible - you can see it in the interactions of any half-decent AI in open world, sandbox games and even in the tactical response of the AI in shooters.
Certainly all decisions cannot be anticipated, not their failure results - but neither can that be done in PnP with a GM. GMs aren't omniscient, at best we paper over teh cracks. And we fail a lot - it's only the players willingness to overlook these glaring oversights on our part that the story continues.
So I don't really need a perfect AI, just one that papers over the cracks in my choices enough for me to pretend it looks good.
During gameplay, failure is constant and only a reload can help you. But you've still failed. I'd probably say that if you want to succeed in a video game, persistence is mandatory.
In any kind of Ironman/Insane death-resets-the-game game mode, it's quite possible you'll never finish the game at all. I don't know if I'd describe that as success.
I think organic storytelling is certainly possible - you can see it in the interactions of any half-decent AI in open world, sandbox games and even in the tactical response of the AI in shooters.
Certainly all decisions cannot be anticipated, not their failure results - but neither can that be done in PnP with a GM. GMs aren't omniscient, at best we paper over teh cracks. And we fail a lot - it's only the players willingness to overlook these glaring oversights on our part that the story continues.
So I don't really need a perfect AI, just one that papers over the cracks in my choices enough for me to pretend it looks good.
Hey now. Something, something, for the greater good! You don't want the terrorists to win, do you? DO YOU??
But....... in Cyberpunk.... you kind of are the terrorists... especially if you listen to half the nonsense Diamondback posts about...
Rather than success, what should be mandatory would be the chance of succeeding. If a player is skilled-clever enough, she/he should be able to overcome difficulties and tasks.
But if success is a must, then where is the funny part of a challenge?
In my opinion, especially if dealing with a cyberpunk world, players should never have success guaranteed. There would be choices, and consequences (and succeeding doesn't necessarily mean 100% good consequences).
But the experience is quite different when you accept a quest, and you do not actually know if you might be successfull or not.
...is English your first language?
I only ask, because of the use of "funny" here, rather than "fun." Didn't know if that was a typo, or a minor slip in the language barrier.
[/tangent]
My first language is Spanish.
So I guess I will never get rid of mistakes like that one.
Yup, it should be fun there, and not funny (and yes, I do know the difference, so no excuses here).
I think I get what OP is saying.
Here's another idea on failure doesn't mean game over, and taking responsibility for your failure.
Instead fully outright failing the entire mission, if the player has an ally/buddy present, the game fast forwards to a checkpoint in that mission where you see your friend resuscitating/reviving (not from actual death mind you) the player.
The player misses out on all possible xp, loot, etc.. from between the point of death, and the advanced checkpoint he is revived at. However the buddy was able to acquire the bare minimum critical information necessary to continue the mission, or any mission critical items.
The player is not fully healed, and he should be pretty banged up. If there is a system for crippled limb/organ checks, on player "death", this would also apply.
I would like to add, that to spice it up, you might get a bit of dialogue from your "friend" regarding your state. You'll get to know just what they really think about you, and how you performed in the mission. Which might be relevant at a later point regarding the character of your "friend".
Here's another idea on failure doesn't mean game over, and taking responsibility for your failure.
Instead fully outright failing the entire mission, if the player has an ally/buddy present, the game fast forwards to a checkpoint in that mission where you see your friend resuscitating/reviving (not from actual death mind you) the player.
The player misses out on all possible xp, loot, etc.. from between the point of death, and the advanced checkpoint he is revived at. However the buddy was able to acquire the bare minimum critical information necessary to continue the mission, or any mission critical items.
The player is not fully healed, and he should be pretty banged up. If there is a system for crippled limb/organ checks, on player "death", this would also apply.
I would like to add, that to spice it up, you might get a bit of dialogue from your "friend" regarding your state. You'll get to know just what they really think about you, and how you performed in the mission. Which might be relevant at a later point regarding the character of your "friend".