Some More Point Less Questions

[OrbWeaver]

The system oDDity seems to be proposing is similar to the luck systems used in certain pen-and-paper RPG games, whereby your luck would decrease with each successive use.

 

It's very effective at discouraging risk-taking behaviour, but it's certainly not realistic.

[ZylonBane]

Are you talking about a luck modifier that's applied automatically, or a special "luck" power that must be explicitly used?

 

If the former, ugh. Sounds like a bandage slapped on a fundamentally flawed system.

[oDDity]

The system oDDity seems to be proposing is similar to the luck systems used in certain pen-and-paper RPG games, whereby your luck would decrease with each successive use.

 

It's very effective at discouraging risk-taking behaviour, but it's certainly not realistic.

 

Yes, the point is to discourage the sort of wreckless risk taking people get up to in games, and therefoe it is realistic, becasue you dont play chicken with archers and trained swordsmen in reality. When you know your neck is on the line you think twice.

That's also why a mutiplier is necessary, so people pay for any risk taking by increasing te risk even furthur if they try it again

It's also more exciting knowing you can die any time, rather than having a visual indicaiton of when you're going to die.

It removes the totally predictable element the old heath bar system creates.

[Ishtvan]

ZylonBane has a point that probability takes care of things without the need to add up some "luck" multiplier. Coming back to the coin metaphor, the odds are low of flipping "heads" N times in a row, because the odds are: 50% * 50% * 50% * .... = (1/2)^N . There is no mechanism that increases the likelyhood of getting "tails" on each individual coin flip, it remains 50%.

 

Similarly, if you had a fall with a 50% chance of killing you, and for whatever reason the player kept climbing up and falling down that drop N times, the odds of survival are (1/2)^N. The odds of surviving 'till the end of the mission keep going down the more times the player falls, and this is just due to the math, no need for a luck modifier if that's what you're trying to achieve.

 

I thought the point of your modifier was to simulate the effects of past damage on the body, making it harder for one to avoid future damage? (i.e., what the health bar currently keeps track of) If this is the case, shouldn't the modifier also be somewhat random? Saying a particular fall modifies your ability to deal with future damage by the same amount every time is equivalent to saying the fall has the same physiological effects every time. I thought that's what you're trying to avoid?

 

As for different modifiers for different types of damage, that doesn't make sense to me. If you're trying to use the modifier to represent the effects of past damage making it increasingly difficult to avoid future damage, I would think something like a boulder falling on your leg would still effect how well you could evade an arrow shot at you.

[oDDity]

OF course a luck modifier isn't essential, but I want to increase the risk factor at a faster rate. I think a natural rate gives the player too much leeway.

I'm not using the modifier to simulate the effects of past damage, since that's just another health meter. I dont' agree that injuries small enough not to have any effect on you can add up to an injury that stops you. Major injuries come in one hit.

[Springheel]

Yes, the point is to discourage the sort of wreckless risk taking people get up to in games

 

Otherwise known as 'fun'.

 

That's also why a mutiplier is necessary, so people pay for any risk taking by increasing te risk even furthur if they try it again

 

This is already worked into the current system. If you take a hit that doesn't kill you, it's left you with fewer hit points, so the next hit is much more likely to kill you. Is there an echo in here...?

 

It's also more exciting knowing you can die any time

 

In your opinion. I'm not sure how many would agree with you.

 

I dont' agree that injuries small enough not to have any effect on you can add up to an injury that stops you.

 

But that's exactly what your system does. Each small injury increases the chance of you being killed by the next small injury.

[ZylonBane]

Anyone else get the impression that Oddity would be the least popular dungeonmaster ever?

[oDDity]

Otherwise known as 'fun'.

There are many definitions of fun.

This is already worked into the current system. If you take a hit that doesn't kill you, it's left you with fewer hit points, so the next hit is much more likely to kill you. Is there an echo in here...?

..except you can pick up a potion can you're suddenly perfect again, and there is no 'likely' involved, you know by looking at your little meter what's going to happen and when.

 

But that's exactly what your system does. Each small injury increases the chance of you being killed by the next small injury.

No, it's a big injury that kills you. A big injury denoted by the fact that you rolled a maximum. There has to be some abstracion obviously, until we can have 100% totally realistic combat simulator. This is about degrees of abstraction, and the current system is way beyond what's necessary.

[Springheel]

you know by looking at your little meter what's going to happen and when.

 

Really. You have 20 HP left, and you're about to get hit by an arrow that can do anywhere from 5 to 50 points of damage. Tell me exactly whether you're going to die or not.

 

You are being totally obtuse about what multiple people have pointed out. Random damage and percentage chance to kill are EQUALLY random.

 

..except you can pick up a potion can you're suddenly perfect again

 

So this is really a backhanded way of trying to get rid of healing potions? Just don't put any in your map. Then you've got random damage, you won't know how much it will take to kill you, and you won't be able to heal yourself. All without having to do any extra work.

[Ishtvan]

..except you can pick up a potion can you're suddenly perfect again, and there is no 'likely' involved,

Whether health potions are in the map is completely up to the FM author. If you as an author don't want to give people that crutch, you don't have to put them in.

 

you know by looking at your little meter what's going to happen and when.

As we've been saying, if damage is randomized, you don't know what's going to happen.

 

There has to be some abstracion obviously, until we can have 100% totally realistic combat simulator. This is about degrees of abstraction, and the current system is way beyond what's necessary.

In some cases, going halfway towards realism is much worse than sticking with an abstraction that works. For example, consider what would happen if we had position-dependent damage effects, and a hit to your sword arm make your sword swing really crappy. Guess what a real person would do if their sword arm got broken? Probably switch their sword to their other hand. If we went halfway with the realism and made the sword attack ineffectual when that arm was wounded, but did not put in a system to let people switch the sword to their other arm, the end result is more frustrating and unbelievable than a purely abstract damage system, because we put in realistic consequences, but did not put in realistic options to deal with those consequences.

 

IMO the damage system is similar, in that it would have to get very realistic with effects and options such as binding your wounds to stop bleeding, going into shock, deciding which limbs to favor, etc. To me, levels of realism less than this would seem less well thought-out and more unbelievable than an abstract system.

 

I'm all for trying out new things, but I'd rather we innovate in the area of stealth gameplay rather than extensively modeling the effects of combat and wounds. I'm going to do my best to stay out of combat, and I'm happy as long as 1-2 sword hits will kill me on Expert difficulty, and could care less how many hits it takes to kill the player on Easy.

[oDDity]

You're obviosuly a man with no convictions then. That's not how to make a game, you have to have a vision and stick with it, you have to care, no half assed 'let's try to please everyone' about it.

Really. You have 20 HP left, and you're about to get hit by an arrow that can do anywhere from 5 to 50 points of damage. Tell me exactly whether you're going to die or not.

Really. You start with 100 hp, you get hit with an arrow that can do anywhere from 5 to 50 damge, and you know for a fact you can't die. The arrow has zero chance of killing you for some bizarre and ridiculous reason you have failed to point out..

I would compromise if the player had 100 hp and any injury recived was to do damage from 0- 100, but in leaps of 10, so it either does 0, 10, 20, etc. THat way you have about a one in ten chance of being killed by it, which is exceptionally fair.

I can't compromise over health potions though, I've already said they have no place in a stealth game. Some people only want to keep them because they've bcome a habit. Your usual line of 'let's keep them in but you don't have to use them' is as pathetic as ever. You obviosuly haven't got a decision making bone in your body.

[ZylonBane]

Really. You start with 100 hp, you get hit with an arrow that can do anywhere from 5 to 50 damge, and you know for a fact you can't die. The arrow has zero chance of killing you for some bizarre and ridiculous reason you have failed to point out..

The reason it hasn't been pointed out is because it's obvious to anyone who isn't being deliberately obtuse, such as yourself.

 

The reason a single arrow has a 0% chance of killing a player at full health is this: Difficulty scaling. It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the particular damage-modeling system, it has to do with the designer making a conscious decision that it takes more than one arrow to kill a player at full health.

 

You're never going to get anyone to take you seriously if you keep confusing the design of damage-modeling systems with how they're used. So decide what you're arguing against-- unrealistic capacity to absorb damage, or unrealistic modeling of damage. They're two distinct arguments, and conflating them doesn't help anybody.

[oDDity]

Both.

For the damage capacity, it's obvious to anyone that an arrow being able to kill you at any time, rather than an arrow that sometimes has zero chance of killing you becasue of some contrived system, is the more realistic and superior design.

And a damage model consisting of the visible hitpoints bar and health pickups, with each hit doing a predictable amount of damge, is also unsavory and as ancient as games themselves. ABout time it was changed.

[ZylonBane]

...and health pickups

And this is yet a THIRD argument you keep trying to combine with the other two. A "health potion" is nothing more than an item which modifies one or more variables internal to the damage-modeling system. Such items can exist for any possible system anyone could conceive of. Your own "luck multiplier" system could have the player picking four-leaf-clovers to increase their luck.

 

So let's see if I can sort out your muddled mess--

 

First argument-- hit points are silly

Second argument-- players are allowed to take too much damage

Third argument-- items which allow instant recovery from damage are silly

 

Arguments #2 and #3 are entirely within the purview of FM authors, so that just leaves you with #1 as any sort of meaningful argument.

 

So, what was it you were saying about the more often the player does something, the less likely they should be able to do it successfully? Sounds rather counterintuitive, doesn't it?

[oDDity]

Core game mechanics shouldn't be in the hands of FM authors, they should be dictated to them.

How many games have you played where you get a chocie of damage system?

It doesn't happen, the designers choose what damage system you'll have and that's what you get.

In my sustem the difficulty is built into the damage system, they aren't spearated, so you can't turn it down or add in health potions, or cheat.

 

So, what was it you were saying about the more often the player does something, the less likely they should be able to do it successfully? Sounds rather counterintuitive, doesn't it?

The more often the player does a risky thing which relies on luck, the less they should be able to do it sucessfully.

[Springheel]

Your usual line of 'let's keep them in but you don't have to use them' is as pathetic as ever. You obviosuly haven't got a decision making bone in your body.

 

Sure I do. I decided I want health potions and a health bar. And I decided your idea is nothing more than an attempt to make everyone play the way you want them to play. Again.

 

And I've decided that you're not likely to listen to anything else anyone says on the issue, so I'll stop wasting time trying.

[oDDity]

Sure I do. I decided I want health potions and a health bar. And I decided your idea is nothing more than an attempt to make everyone play the way you want them to play. Again.

 

And I've decided that you're not likely to listen to anything else anyone says on the issue, so I'll stop wasting time trying.

 

And you're trying to make people play the way you think is right. It just so happens that it's already the way Thief is setup, so you think you've got the moral high ground.

Anyway, whan it comes to core game mechanics, making people play the way you wnt them to is called making design decisons, and that's what making a game is all about.

[ZylonBane]

Core game mechanics shouldn't be in the hands of FM authors, they should be dictated to them.

The inclusion or not of health potions is not a core game mechanic.

Whether archers are armed with regular Nerf arrows or razor-tipped Kill-O-Matic arrows is not a core game mechanic.

The damage model, however, IS a core game mechanic, independent of damage stimuli (both positive and negative). So if you want to talk about that, talk about that, and stop trying to muddy the waters. Well, unless you realize how weak your argument is and are muddying the waters on purpose in an ineffectual attempt to confuse things even further.

 

The more often the player does a risky thing which relies on luck, the less they should be able to do it sucessfully.

See, that's the fundamental problem with your proposal-- there's no such thing as "luck", except in the vernacular sense. Probability theory does not recognize the concept of luck. What you're suggesting is that the odds of performing any particular task should degrade over time, which not only has no basis in reality, but pretty much runs counter to it-- in real life, you generally get better at performing tasks the more you do them, not worse. If your system were implemented consistently, the player would eventually die just from walking.

 

It seems likely that what you really want is a simulation of a foul-tempered DM watching over the player, throwing a hissy fit and killing the player when they consistently roll "too good".

 

If you don't want the player to consistently succeed at something, just give that thing a low base probability of success. There's no need to monkey around with some screwball decaying-luck system.

 

In my sustem the difficulty is built into the damage system, they aren't spearated, so you can't turn it down or add in health potions...

WRONG. If the system can change state to penalize the player, then that state change can be reverted. It's all just numbers. You do realize that, don't you? Of course a game could be created that didn't include health potions, but that would only be because the designer decided not to include them, not because there's anything intrinsic preventing them from being implemented.

[New Horizon]

I'm at a loss as to why this is being argued as if it's being considered for the toolset, it isn't. As I've stated, the toolset will have the standard system. This is for FM authors. When the toolset is finished and we begin work on a campaign, then we'll look at these ideas and decide how they will work. Until then, I think we should all drop it and quit making fools of ourselves with schoolyard tactics in the public forums.

[ZylonBane]

I'm at a loss as to why this is being argued...

Note the title of the thread.

 

Would you feel better if this were moved to Off-Topic?

[Domarius]

IMO the reason why something like oDDity's idea would be good is the very same reason we probably shouldn't use it yet:

It's never been done before. Well sure we are doing things in TDM that weren't in T2, but they are just evolutions from existing features. This is changing a core system in a big way. Too risky to be a safe choice in the early stages. We'll have lots of freedom to experiment after the basic tools have been released.

 

Thief 2 * Cool graphics + better AI = what most people want out of The DarkMod.

 

I beleive what oDDity said - a big reason why most people like the existing system is because it's what they're used to. But that's also one of the big reasons why we should start there.

[New Horizon]

Note the title of the thread.

 

Would you feel better if this were moved to Off-Topic?

 

No.

 

People are just pointlessly arguing against something that isn't even an issue for the toolset and that's our primary goal right now. When the campaign is underway...AFTER...the toolset release, then we can all argue until we're blue in the face.

 

 

IMO the reason why something like oDDity's idea would be good is the very same reason we probably shouldn't use it yet:

It's never been done before. Well sure we are doing things in TDM that weren't in T2, but they are just evolutions from existing features. This is changing a core system in a big way. Too risky to be a safe choice in the early stages. We'll have lots of freedom to experiment after the basic tools have been released.

 

Thief 2 * Cool graphics + better AI = what most people want out of The DarkMod.

 

I beleive what oDDity said - a big reason why most people like the existing system is because it's what they're used to. But that's also one of the big reasons why we should start there.

 

Again, this isn't a consideration for the toolset. So all this argument is moot. I could see us trying it out for the campaign...but that's not for awhile.

[Domarius]

I know but I was justifying why it shouldn't be considered.

[sparhawk]

Anyone else get the impression that Oddity would be the least popular dungeonmaster ever?

 

That's a long since established fact.

[oDDity]

See, that's the fundamental problem with your proposal-- there's no such thing as "luck", except in the vernacular sense. Probability theory does not recognize the concept of luck. What you're suggesting is that the odds of performing any particular task should degrade over time, which not only has no basis in reality, but pretty much runs counter to it-- in real life, you generally get better at performing tasks the more you do them, not worse. If your system were implemented consistently, the player would eventually die just from walking.

The mutiplier is necessary to prevent any load/save cheating, where the filthy, sly, underhand players ( which make up the majority of gamers) try to make a quck save before he tries combat. If there is no multiplier then he can save and load until he beats his opponant due to natural luck, and he can keep doing this wiht every fight, since every fight is a fresh 'roll' with the same 50/50 chance.

With the multiplier, even when he beats them, or succeeds in making a big jump, his multiplier has still gone up, so the next fight/jump will be even harder, etc, until he'll have to save and load a million times becasue his luck will be near zero and he'll be taking a fatal blow with every hit.

 

 

It seems likely that what you really want is a simulation of a foul-tempered DM watching over the player, throwing a hissy fit and killing the player when they consistently roll "too good".

There's no point comparing this to an RPG. The largest part of the fun of a dungeon crawl RPG is the combat.

Combat plays no part in this game, so players should be punished heavily for attempting it, and this simulates the fact that the character they play here is a little skinny guy who's no good at fighting and is going up against large strong men who are.

Hence, IT SHOULDN'T BE FAIR.

If you don't want the player to consistently succeed at something, just give that thing a low base probability of success. There's no need to monkey around with some screwball decaying-luck system.

WRONG. If the system can change state to penalize the player, then that state change can be reverted. It's all just numbers. You do realize that, don't you? Of course a game could be created that didn't include health potions, but that would only be because the designer decided not to include them, not because there's anything intrinsic preventing them from being implemented.

 

The vast majority of people would not have the abiltiy to go in and swap the numbers around or ad din health potions unless they knew how to code, and I would not have them easily placed in a .def file where any kid can get at them. That's ont of the things I hate about the Doom setup - just how easy it is to go into def files and filddle with all the core settings. It ahas advantages of coiuse, but also disadvantages.

Believe it or not (and I know you will) I have put forward a serious proposal for encrytping some of the def files so people can't tamper with them -at least not without knowledge and effort, in which case you deserve it.