There's talk about "dailies" and random door missions in another thread and something occurred to me. Part of what makes a good heroic story is the hero occasionally coming up shy of the mark. Getting beaten, failing a task, in other words; losing. In a story, overcoming hardship and rising after falling shows strength of character in the hero.
So, I believe it should be possible to absolutely, unequivocally FAIL a mission. I don't think the consequences should be too severe, however. Just enough to make you want to play smarter or be a teensy bit more prepared next time. (and to be clear, I'm specifically talking about "radio/newspaper" type instanced missions only here, not Major Storyline or Lore Arcs, etc.)
I don't think that this has been set out anywhere yet, but lets assume that when your character gets "knocked out", you respawn inside the mission zone, say just inside the door, or someplace safe where you are not immediately attacked. I propose that you reappear, but are still knocked out and are presented with a few options:
As a Solo, you can choose to revive in a hospital somewhere nearby at full strength/health. However, the cost of your stay is half the XP you gained in the preceding mission. AND, you can't replay that mission. (You have to return to your contact and since it's randomly generated you won't get the same one again.) You get a message telling you the consequences of your failure. "Bad Guy has escaped to wreak terror on the city."
OR
You can choose to revive inside the mission, with all the bad guys you have defeated still down, but you are at a temporarily reduced health level, say 75% of total, for the mission duration. (Which means you can't heal it all the way back up until you leave the instance) and every time you get knocked out, you lose 25% of your remaining health, so there is a steep "diminishing returns" curve. BUT, if you got all the way through and just had the boss to deal with before you went down, maybe you'd try one more time at 75%
The mechanics might change slightly for team play, perhaps. Maybe as long as there is still a teammate "alive" in the instance, you can return from the hospital, you just don't get any XP while you are outside the instance. But a total team wipe means you fail? Whaddaya think?
I like it, not sure what other players will say, but yes, missions with actual stakes can draw you into the experience more. And when you defeat a mission like this, all the more gratification as well.
Might this produce the 'Bookmark Sidekick', ie an 'extra' teammate who hides near the door and keeps the mission open?
Be Well!
Fireheart
Generally, people who play games play with an expectation that they have a reasonable chance to win. Outside of gambling and how it plays into how people are wire with the incentive to win for a big payoff, we're dealing with a video game, a service where players can easily go somewhere else. With an MMO, if we were to have "forced failure situations" which is different than higher difficulty situations with incentive for reward, it will not promote the type of character growth opportunity as referenced when in a written story. This is because character growth in every other aspect of the game is based on successive results.
Furthermore, if players get the sense that they are being played by untenable situations the devs set up, they will most likely avoid the content, label it as broken, excepting those few who approach the untenable as a challenge. To which if they do succeed and there isn't a comparative reward for the difficulty, they too will most likely complain.
Other than those few who will brag about their accomplishment, if the content has no unique reward for success but is vastly more difficult and yet provides the same rewards as less difficult content, why bother? As a dev, what purpose would there be to designing such content?
Again, there is a difference between designing more difficult but rewarding content, and untenable / designed for failure content. This is, in part why it can be a good thing to create task force content which has a higher base difficulty yet is accessible by a team of 1 (solo player) up to a full team.
To take this a step further, what I'd like to see (this is no promise) is that say a player or team are defeated in a mission and something changes as a result? The bad guys rush to change hideouts, or fortify their position, rush to finish the heist, etc...failing a mission objective triggers a different occurrence. There maybe a loss of faction rating with the TCPD for failing to stop the bank robbery for example. Now being defeated or failing carries meaning to player because there is a consequence to the narrative of the story.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
If Tannim will allow me to throw a monkey wrench at his crowbar ... it would be interesting in sometimes a Mission Failure is the desirable outcome.
In City of Heroes, on the Lady Grey Task Force, there was a Mission that it was generally accepted as being easier to Fail than to Succeed. It was the [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lady_Grey_Task_Force#Save_Captured_Psychics]Save Captured Psychics[/url] Mission. Working to Succeed at this Mission was an annoying SLOG, especially with suicidal NPC behaviors requiring "babysitters" to keep them out of fights they could die in all too easily. Working to Fail at this Mission was incredibly easy ... get the first Psychic NPC before the first elevator and then let her do what she does best ... COMMIT SUICIDE.
Success at this Mission could take 30 minutes or more.
Failure at this Mission could take less than 5 minutes.
Either way, the Mission Chain advanced to the next step.
So what did people do? Let's just say that the Gallows Humor was even more pronounced than for Fusionette. EVERYONE learned that Failure was better than Success on this Mission, and proceeded to act accordingly.
So that's an example of Bad Design™.
But ... what would an example of a "good design" be by way of contrast? Usually "failure" is a Bad Thing™ to have happen ... but not always. In MMORPGs, "failure" is usually handled one of a few ways ... either "WRONG! Do it again!" or in a "never mind, moving on" sort of way. So "failure" is either a block or barely a speedbump (if that). The only way for "failure" to be something other than those two choices requires Additional Content™, and we all know how eager Developers are for THAT responsibility/burden.
The thing is, if there's going to be an "alternate path" opened up by a Mission Failure ... where is the best point to put that branch of the path? At the beginning of the arc? In the middle? At the end? Every step along the way (oi...)? This starts becoming a non-trivial question in a hurry.
A different way to approach things would be as a sort of Ironman Challenge, such that the difficulty levels keep ramping up and up and up the more Mission Successes you rack up in a row. But if you have a Mission Failure, then the difficulty crashes back down to square one and you start the climb all over again. The "challenge" then is to go undefeated (ie. Mission Success) for as long as you can, with the understanding that Mission Success [b][i]is not always expected by default[/i][/b]. Mission Failure will happen occasionally/periodically, as opposed to routinely, and is something that happens to EVERYONE ... eventually ... instead of being something that only happens to the incompetent/stupid/gimped. The "test of character" then becomes, how does the Player react to being (eventually) unsuccessful? After all, if the baseline assumption is "Win Every Time" then what does that say about your game?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Another avenue would be loosely analogous to the early Wing Commander titles where missions branched based on success or failure. Though success was what one strove for, if failure of the mission occurred it didn't result in a final disaster - at least not immediately.
There's quite a bit that could be done with this dynamic. Tough to get this right though since players are likely to perceive failure as either lacking in consequence, or unnecessarily harsh (in their eyes), both of which result in negative perception of the game to Tannim's earlier point.
As for the ironman challenge, such things tend to work well with certain player types. no reason that couldn't be a toggle in one's option settings.
I think rewarding people for higher success rates, as Red suggested, is good. I also think all missions ought to be designed such that they can be done successfully. People wuill still fail missions sometimes, and when they do, it should be the "Bad" outcome, I think. That said, I like the escalating rewards based on success rate through a TF or arc. I also think they could maybe eliminate the Lady Grey "Failure is the BEST Option!" effect by doing the exact opposite of what that TF did. Instead of rewarding Failure with a quicker run through the same content, do something that makes the TF take LONGER when you fail enough of it. So like, if you let the psychics die, your next mission is something really long and non-lucrative as compared to what you would have gotten if you had actually rescued the psychics. This could be done by simply putting the next mission on a larger, more confusing map (like those Orenbega ones....*shudder*) and/or putting in more mobs and making them worth less XP and less swag when defeated. So as such, you're getting "standard type" rewards out of a much longer "worse than standard" amount of work you have to do to get them.
Short summary:
better success rate in early TF missions = better reward rate later on in the TF
failure at any point in the TF before the end = worse reward rates later on (either based on drops or size/difficulty of map, etc)
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
One thing that I liked from Wildstar was that with the dungeons there, they gave you "better" rewards the better the medal you were rewarded.
Now this didn't mean that stuff only dropped when you got GOLD medals, just that getting a gold medal gave you the best CHANCE of getting the "best" loot. What they did was they gave each medal a points total, and you got points by defeating mobs/completing optional objectives/completing it in X period of time.
What I dislike is making mobs give less XP for "failure". Yes you failed, now you have to do a longer one (or two) missions to get back to where you were (or it is a totally different path), but don't also punish the player on top because they failed a mission.
Of course, how the loot system works would be interesting, especially if the penalty is "you get reduced loot as a result". Who would get the blame. For all the gripes that CoX players throw towards the reward schemes of other MMO's, this will only introduce an even bigger incentive to finger point.
It wouldn't be a case of "Well, this will take longer.." It will end up being "IT IS YOUR FAULT FOR US NOT GETTING ANYTHING", even though you end up still being able to complete it.
There are (in my mind) better methods to deal with failure of a mission, but also punishing the players with reduced XP/Loot (even though they might end up defeating MORE of them in the "failure mission") just isn't one of them in my mind
We already aim to provide a means of obtaining greater reward rates via our Challenges and Achievements. Challenges can be provided with street sweeping or within missions. As achievements are earned, greater challenges are provided. Each achievement provides a greater reward bonus (more than one type of reward may be available). If a challenge is failed, the challenge resets back to the initial challenge. Even if certain challenges lead to achievements yielding a badge and the challenge is reset, the achievement can still be earned again (iow already having the badge does not prevent earning the bonus associated with an achievement again).
What I was referring to was that specifically, being defeated in a mission can result in something changing. Not necessarily always a change in outcome for a mission in every mission. It depends on the type of mission being written. Certain missions may have an alternate outcome that isn't necessarily "bad" just not as rewarding. Take scenario of a group of thugs clearing out a warehouse of merch. The hero comes in, is defeated and uses a med evac. The bad guys knowing the hero could return rush to make their escape. The player gets a timer to make it back to the warehouse. They could pay for an emergency relocation from the hospital to return to the extraction point (mission location) or risk it and rush back. Now when the hero returns the thugs are in "let's book it mode" and there aren't as many left yielding less rewards. Or the hero took too long and they've made their escape. While the mission "failed" it isn't over either. Maybe there is another part of this story, where were they going?
Getting through without defeat or using the emergency relocation may have yielded the lead from defeating one of the thugs. Now the hero can search the scene and maybe pick up a lead that can indicate where the thugs have gone. The next mission gets a slight change in now there may be a named thug from the first mission (if there was one) or some of the stolen merch is at the second mission.
It is things like this and our challenges that have given us reason to not include a death penalty at this time. Because being defeated can end up being a penalty in of itself due to challenges being reset or things changing in missions.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
That sounds great!
Be Well!
Fireheart
OKay, Tannim, your second post suggests something like what I was thinking of. To be clear, I was never advocating missions designed so that the hero can't win/must fail. I just wanted there to be a consequence besides "Welp, queue up everyone, let's try again." over and over. Having the bad guys respond in a semi-realistic manner "Let's clear out fellas, they're bound to be back!" or even "Get some guards outside until we finish up in here!" type reactions make perfect sense and would completely satisfy my desire to feel like my actions had an "effect" and that my failure cost me something.
Further, I was specifically speaking of the "random" one-off radio/newspaper type missions. Not missions that were a link in a longer story arc. OTOH, If the whole game is a series of leads and tips to other mission strings and story arcs... Then so much the better as far as I'm concerned!
My primary purpose with all of this stuff is to recognize that smarter gameplay has its place. Just rushing around repetitively bashing mobs can be fun, too, of course. But if that's all that's really necessary to get through EVERY mission it will cease to be as engaging.
To be clear, this is something we're far off from at this time. It is something that our mission creation system should (eventually) allow as a possibility when it is warranted, but it isn't something that will be easy to implement. It also does not prevent players from "gaming the system" and resetting a mission that has gone pear shaped.
This is something that will be a part of the game, not in every mission or story. It was mentioned in our update on player agency.
Later (read: a ways off after launch) we also want to provide a system where players "craft" missions pieced together with clues, akin to a mad-libs style template with puzzled pieces filled in as well.
The truth is, we must allow for both to be viable forms of play. To institute one type of play for certain sets of missions and the other for other sets of missions will only result in subdividing the community into forms of play instead of allowing players to determine their play organically (this is part of emergent game play). It also creates a ton of headaches for designers getting caught up in stylizing content on the type of play and can cause headaches for players who may design their builds for one type of play but get stuck in a mission designed for another type of play.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
This sounds disappointingly like designing for the Lowest Common Denominator. I was hoping for a little more diversity in design. I fully expect that some scenarios will be harder for certain types of build, and ideal for yet other builds. Otherwise, why have different builds?
This is what I meant when I talked about "smarter" gameplay. If this scenario isn't ideal for your build, (or archetype, or power set) you might need to take a little more time to strategize and play to your strengths. That's all.
Perhaps I don't understand what you mean by 'Determining their play organically.' What it sounds like is designing in such a way that anyone can easily get through anything with little or no thought as to the method that would be "best" for their character. (or build if you prefer) Of course, it should be POSSIBLE to get through every scenario. But shouldn't some offer a slightly different, greater challenge? And when I say different I mean for different players. Not just the same Uber-difficulty for a particular Boss across the board.
I submit that you will have a hard time designing for "Most Fun" for everyone. The variation is too great. Once again, I'm not saying that it all should be designed a single way. That would defeat the purpose. Then everyone could just figure out the proper build and it would propagate through the community until everyone (excepting a few outliers who are looking for a perverse challenge) was playing the same way. In CoH, especially when it came to teams, you saw exactly that.
No, all I'm advocating is a diversity of design scattered amongst the missions. Just enough so that your Steam-rollers, or Snipers, or Ninjas or whatever have missions that are perfectly suited to them and they feel like Perfect Instruments of Justice. And, occasionally, others where they must think and strive and get beaten and overcome in order to win through.
This, to me, doesn't restrict design. It opens it up. The only 'Dev Headache' I can foresee is striking the right balance of different types. Is that not the sort of headache that comes with the job, regardless? Is that a greater or lesser headache than making sure every character type has an equally Easy/Fun experience with every mission?
And just BTW, Tannim, I appreciate your activity in these forums and your willingness to address individual concerns. I have a deep suspicion that we are actually in agreement here, and that I'm just not articulating well. So, I'll relinquish this in the hope that you'll recognize at least some people, sometimes, are looking for a slightly elevated intellectual challenge amongst the mob beat downs.
Thanks again.
I think that Difficulty Levels will be a big factor here. You cannot craft the game to suit a style of play but you don't have to make it possible for EVERY character build to succeed. Otherwise build become useless. However I firmly believe that any reasonable build with an average level of skill and determination should be able to complete normal missions (not TFs or boss fights) on the Easy setting because that's what easy MEANS.
On the same train of thought, I also believe that badges and accolades should be earned at Normal difficulty. Being able to achieve these on Easy waters down the accomplishment.
Will certain mission be easier for certain builds? Of course they will. One of the challenges of the Devs is to design missions in such a way that not ALL of them are easier for a certain build though.
We also need to realize that 'easy' means different things to different people. I have tremendous patience for slogging through a mission with a low risk/low reward ratio. Sure, I COULD play faster and get more xp per hour or whatever but the first time I go through anything the speed is irrelevant. I want to SEE the content and experience it. After the first couple of trips I can play things more fast and loose because I'm not missing anything. Some players would consider the slow approach a slog and 'too hard' because for them the pace magnifies the difficulty.
So one player might consider the Controller's normal method of 'tie everyone down and stand here grinding on them for nearly a minute in total safety' easy and others might consider that hard. It's very subjective. This is why we have to use hard and fast numbers like xp/hour or damage per second as benchmarks. In a perfect world every build of every AT, taken at an average level of skill, should be able to complete 1-50 in about the same amount of time. Sure, the Stalker might stealth some missions for speed bonuses but then the Kill-Alls will be slower. Controllers will be safer (usually) so they spend less down time healing and travelling back to the mission but they can't defeat single foes with 2 hits either. It should all average out in the long run. Of course, there are too many variables to actually DO this but it helps to have a goal to shoot for.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Fixed it for you.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Nice try, Red. But that's just a semantic shift that doesn't address the concern in a meaningful way. Maybe Comicsluvr has the only practicable answer. Difficulty setting. It's kind of an unfortunate One-Size-Fits-All sort of solution, but apparently it's believed impossible to obtain the results I hope for with mere ingenuity and imaginative design.
But hey, repetitive, simplistic combat didn't ruin CoH for me. So it probably won't kill my enthusiasm for Titan City, either.
You're welcome. Open, direct communication is very important to me. As a player, I'm always very appreciative when game devs respond to players, so I try to fit in some communication time throughout my day. I'm particularly guilty of checking the forums from my phone while I'm idling when out on errands or trips (I have physical limitations that require I quite literally, stop moving and rest for a while so I have lots of waiting around time).
Back to your concerns through...
I too believe we are more in agreement than not. I didn't mean to have it sound as if everything is literally designed around the most simple common denominator of combat. That is the starting point, but not the end point. As time goes on, the types of encounters will change from mission to mission, from faction to faction, with team size, and difficulty settings.
What we have to do however, is to ensure players with basic builds have a reasonable success rate throughout the span of the game. More specifically, we need to avoid scenarios where a dev designs a mission so specific to certain play styles as to cause other play styles that do not fit that mold ineffective. Reference Deus Ex: HE and what happened when the dev team outsourced their boss fights to another team. It is an extreme example of what I'm talking about but one that illustrates the dangers.
The game allowed players to build and play for stealth or combat. Yet the dev team that designed the boss fights made them primarily require direct combat to resolve, causing the stealth builds to be largely ineffective, requiring players to resort to direct combat. Again it is an extreme example.
If we box in players into playing a way that they literally can't play, then players will feel cheated because they were given access to something they can't do. Say for example, a player makes a typical bash'em up build and they play that way through multiple missions. Then one day they get a mission where it literally tells them that they must sneak into a place and avoid detection at all costs or the mission will fail. Worse yet, there are not any "tools" given to the player to cover the scenario of "in case you don't know what to do here". Trying to cover every possibility that way lies madness. Well, now this player has never bothered to build for stealth, never bothered to engage the game's stealth mechanics, and now has to try and play a way they did not envision their character playing, worse yet they've been forced into this or forced to face failure. That is something we should strive to avoid.
If this mission's real objective is to "get the macguffin", and nearly any build, and nearly any play style is viable, then when players enter the mission, they can decide if they want to smash their way through, decisively pick and choose who, what, and when they fight, or stealth their way through, control spawns and try to distance themselves before gaining too much aggro, etc... Each of those ways to play is something we call a Challenge, and earning an commensurate Achievement will result in rewarding each type of play. This way, nearly every build is viable, and nearly every play style receives a commensurate reward. Missions may be designed in such a way that certain builds have inherent advantages over other types of builds, but should not be designed as to result in the above "bad shift in game play design" example.
So, what do I mean by players determining their play organically? Well, if most missions are viable for a majority of play styles, from the vast difference of mindless smash to stealth, along with encounters which can pose a range of potential risks (some basic examples: sappers, or a hidden sniper, an npc stalwart that can taunt pcs, maps with traps, security measures, swarm-style spawns, etc...) and you potentially have players with vastly different builds (thanks to the different primaries, secondaries of each class / spec), along with different masteries thereof, what results is something we refer to as emergent game play:
Players combining their unique styles / builds of play will, over time, figure out how to work with other unique builds and styles of play and play through missions differently from team to team or even from play session to play session with the same type of character. Players will do things that devs did not plan for, but still work within the parameters of performance (sometimes not and adjustments are made)
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Thanks, Tannim. I was right about our congruity after all.
Faith: RESTORED!! :)
I really like the idea of potential failure in missions, one-off or story arc. Often in many games (STO) I find myself thinking at the badguys, "Hah, you can't win, my superpower is infinite respawns!" Which is amusing for a moment, but ultimately saps away much of the sense of challenge. I like the sense of tension created by the idea that if I screw up bad enough, it will have actual repercussions. (Non sequitur tangent: "Reaper Cushions soften the blow of Death") I would also enjoy if sometimes, early failures led to different or better rewards for pulling off a comeback.
A thought regarding difficulty levels: In CoH, and most other games, adjusting difficulty would alter the content you interacted with, which is sometimes desirable (say when you want to steamroll hundreds of purples for massive XP) but could make things unpleasant for the team, such as the guy who has to wait at the door because he can't handle what the rest of the team can, even SK'd. I'd like to see a difficulty system that worked more like CoH's late-issue Task Force modifiers, only targeted solely at yourself. Or perhaps "simple" and "advanced" difficulty settings specifically... for simple settings, you could decrease the difficulty by 1-2 steps, each giving you some buffs, and increased difficulty debuffing you, and advanced settings letting you choose the specific buffs/debuffs. In either case, the difficulty modifier would also alter your XP gain and loot chances. This way, you could increase your own difficulty and improve your rewards if you have a strong build and know how best to use it, or back off to easy mode if you consistently find yourself not up to a task, or just want to blow through something and feel like you're in god mode... but either way, you can still team with others without affecting their rewards or difficulty (aside from how much you potentially contribute to the team).