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victrix posted:Problem is that also lets you skip all the potentially dangerous encounters to get those items you might miss. Generate each dungeon type a bunch of times (maybe 500-1000) and see how many chests and secret portals are generated for each. Figure out the difference between the average number of chests per dungeon and the average number of chests per secret area, then subtract the secret area chests from the main dungeon chests. Then, keep a running count of chests opened whenever the player is going through a dungeon. If it is below the average number of chests they should have opened based on the dungeon type, add that loot to a lootsplosion outside the dungeon (with a message saying you tediously backtrack to open chests you may have missed); the key being it exploding outside the dungeon so the hypothetical optimal player can't backtrack to double dip on chest opening. Then add a downside to the Southern Born trait that says you don't do that completionist backtracking garbage, you're here to kill mans and drink tea!
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Mar 8, 2016 01:22
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StrixNebulosa posted:The only thing dangerous in these dungeons after I've beaten the boss are the secret rooms which might spawn horribly overleveled boss mobs I have to run from. Everything dies in 2-3 hits, so...not really? If nothing is threatening to you, you're not fighting stuff at a level where it's going to routinely give you useful upgrades - dmans is really good about giving you a shitton of xp for fighting dangerous enemies, and very little for farming easy stuff. And most armor/weapon tier upgrades are gated at certain experience levels, and then fairly common at that level. And that means solving a much more difficult problem, which is how to stop players from engaging in efficient-but-not-fun gameplay (AMA about farming consumables in dungeonmans towns), and farming weak enemies and dungeons because there's a chance you might luck into, say, a Tome is exactly that. (I do think its funny to use dmans as an example for this discussion though, since it's the only game I can think of offhand that does give you free loot for what would be totally trivial content - AND lets you bypass boring early game slogging via the academy gearup)
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Mar 8, 2016 01:27
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If the game just gave you treasure for speed racing to the boss, that would defeat the entire purpose of... everything. I mean it might work for some games, but the more a game becomes push butan -> receive loot with minimal risk and effort, the less like a game I want to make it becomes. Auto explore + being granted everything you missed is a fast track to players spending three hours playing, getting everything they want, and quitting out of boredom. For better or worse, I feel like Dungeonmans should reward exploration and  But please take note, I don't think that it is a bad idea, it's just something that makes me feel ill. You're not a bad person for eating a mayo+onion sandwich on wholegrain bread, but ugh fllhugughgh how could you!? Games like Sil, where stealth is rewarded, are great because that's the focus, so it's not like I'm anti-sneaking or against the concept of avoiding trouble, but it's not Dungeonmans. But could it be? It's really cool to read feedback like this because it means players are looking at the game, feeling real potential, and hoping it can be something more. "I'd love to play a Sneakymans" is something I hear often, but Dungeonmans as is kinda falls apart when the player spends a lot of time invisible or straight avoiding combat. Tricksonometry used to have invisibility and mirror image powers, and they broke the game so hard it was criminal. Feedback like this gives me reason to ponder how I can make the game's systems better. TooMuchAbstraction posted:And from a game design standpoint, such a system would mean that you'd have a much firmer idea of how strong characters are, since it ought to be determined simply from how many dungeons they've cleared (plus a fiddle factor from explored-but-uncleared dungeons). This is an interesting thought, but consider that the game is already self policing in that regard. The monsters grow in power, and players can beat them or they can't. The ability to beat them comes from 1) preparing your gear 2) learning to play. If 1) is auto handled by the game, that's no fun. There are people who want to try and clear the whole game using nothing but Yesterday's Knife, let 'em do it.
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Mar 8, 2016 02:25
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my thoughts on exploring dungeons in dungeonmans: it's boring if world champion mode is off, if it's on then exploring dungeons is fun. i wish it didn't take up a perk though and was more of an option / setting or hard mode or something.
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Mar 8, 2016 02:32
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its boring if you arent in dungeons that are dangerous after building up an academy
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Mar 8, 2016 02:34
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victrix posted:If nothing is threatening to you, you're not fighting stuff at a level where it's going to routinely give you useful upgrades - dmans is really good about giving you a shitton of xp for fighting dangerous enemies, and very little for farming easy stuff. And most armor/weapon tier upgrades are gated at certain experience levels, and then fairly common at that level. I'm playing really, really carefully after splatting my mans on Groups of Orcs / Elemental Enemies En Masse / Those loving Venomous Archers At The Worst Moments / That Puzzle Boss Who Got Me After I Took Out His Statue Things But Still Couldn't Hurt Him, and going out of my way to get every scrap of helpful items and any chance at a book so when I finally poke the harder dungeons I'll be ready. I'm not good at roguelikes, and I need to take them more slowly in high-stakes situations, so I'm trying to give myself more of an edge before I hop into the risky dungeons.
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Mar 8, 2016 02:36
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sithael posted:it's boring if world champion mode is off, if it's on then exploring dungeons is fun. i wish it didn't take up a perk though and was more of an option / setting or hard mode or something. Awesome! posted:its boring if you arent in dungeons that are dangerous after building up an academy
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Mar 8, 2016 02:37
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StrixNebulosa posted:I'm playing really, really carefully after splatting my mans on Groups of Orcs / Elemental Enemies En Masse / Those loving Venomous Archers At The Worst Moments / That Puzzle Boss Who Got Me After I Took Out His Statue Things But Still Couldn't Hurt Him I want to see a game where every monster is named like this.
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Mar 8, 2016 02:54
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madjackmcmad posted:If the game just gave you treasure for speed racing to the boss, that would defeat the entire purpose of... everything. I mean it might work for some games, but the more a game becomes push butan -> receive loot with minimal risk and effort, the less like a game I want to make it becomes. Auto explore + being granted everything you missed is a fast track to players spending three hours playing, getting everything they want, and quitting out of boredom. For better or worse, I feel like Dungeonmans should reward exploration and Hey, it's your game after all. I'm not the kind of person who likes sneaking past stuff either, because sneaking is pretty boring. I'm just saying that, if you're going to shove 45 chests in a dungeon that is on the borderline of Mundane and Trivial, where the only thing that can reasonably hurt me is a flame pillar trap, you can drat well be sure I'm going to take the time to open all 45 chests and be bored and invincible while doing so.
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Mar 8, 2016 03:09
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doctorfrog posted:If all this sounds quite interesting, it is, but somehow it doesn't manage to be fun. I am a pretty casual player of such games, though, and Deadnaut lies in an intersection of RTS squad tactical and roguelike genres. Thanks for the suggestion, but indeed I don't think it's for me. It's also made by the Zafehouse Diaries people, another game that didn't live up to its potential/hype.
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Mar 8, 2016 03:19
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Floodkiller posted:Hey, it's your game after all. I'm not the kind of person who likes sneaking past stuff either, because sneaking is pretty boring. I'm just saying that, if you're going to shove 45 chests in a dungeon that is on the borderline of Mundane and Trivial, where the only thing that can reasonably hurt me is a flame pillar trap, you can drat well be sure I'm going to take the time to open all 45 chests and be bored and invincible while doing so. Every player plays differently, although there are a few overarching trends. You're choosing to be bored and invincible -- it is not the optimal play style, but getting each and every treasure chest makes you feel good, and you can't be blamed for that. Temple dungeons are a problem for you in that regard, and I'm not sure what to do about it.
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Mar 8, 2016 03:25
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Floodkiller posted:you can drat well be sure I'm going to take the time to open all 45 chests and be bored and invincible while doing so.
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Mar 8, 2016 03:29
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Awesome! posted:its not his fault your brains make you do dumb things like this It's not, no, but a surprisingly large part of game design is avoiding having "boring but optimal" strategies, or to put it another way, a lot of game design is protecting players from themselves. What Floodkiller is saying is that, given the opportunity, they are unable to prevent themselves from playing in a style that they admits they find boring. Which is why they prefer games that do not provide that opportunity. madjackmcmad's "fault", then, lies in producing a game that doesn't sufficiently (from Floodkiller's perspective) prevent players from boring themselves.
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Mar 8, 2016 03:36
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i dont blame a game dev for not protecting idiots from themselves. hell i appreciate it even.
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Mar 8, 2016 03:39
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Visualizing a 3d region density map for procedural detailing. Oddly satisfying.
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Mar 8, 2016 03:42
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Awesome! posted:its not his fault your brains make you do dumb things like this It's not just his brain, it's mine too, and I'm sure many others. If the optimal way of playing isn't fun, then you have to choose between fun and optimal. Now either you can convince me that the fun way is so close to optimal as to not matter (and I haven't played DMans enough to know that), or I'm going to feel like I'm missing something if I don't play optimally. So, for example, when I die, I'm not sure what the lesson is. Should I have played the encounter better? Should I have avoided it? or should I have spent more time grinding stuff? That last possibility is what makes me and others strive towards the optimal play, to have control over at least one aspect of an otherwise hard and random game. Problem is it's boring and tedious, and then I just end up playing another game that has eliminated that, like Crawl.
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Mar 8, 2016 03:43
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Unimpressed posted:If the optimal way of playing isn't fun, then you have to choose between fun and optimal.
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Mar 8, 2016 03:44
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Awesome! posted:you have a weird definition of optimal No he doesn't. The optimal playstyle is the one most likely to result in a win. This is not a contentious definition; it's used all the time when talking about game design. "Optimal" and "fun" are two different axes, and ideally they coalign strongly. If you have a really strong design, then suboptimal play is also fun so players can choose to deliberately handicap themselves, but they should not be required to do so in order to enjoy your game.
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Mar 8, 2016 03:52
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Awesome! posted:you have a weird definition of optimal Perhaps, but more likely you're being intentionally obtuse...
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Mar 8, 2016 03:52
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Awesome! posted:you have a weird definition of optimal It's really common among roguelike players. They'll do unfun things if they feel like it makes their hero the strongest, and then complain that the game is boring because the best (re: only) way to play isn't a good time. Look at it from this perspective: they *could* be playing the more fun way, but the whole time it will be gnawing at them that they aren't being optimal with their use of time. That's not how I often approach games, but it's not uncommon in my audience. It's the reason that trivial dungeons have lootsplosions, because optimal players felt they had to go through those dungeons for loot and power, even if there was very little to be had. So my first solution was to prevent you from going into a trivial dungeon, and these people hated that because they felt punished for leveling too quickly, It was Darren Grey, the Roguelike Radio guy, who recommended that the loot just pop out of trivial dungeons. It felt very Dungeonmans and many people were happy.
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Mar 8, 2016 03:56
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the optimal way to win at mario kart is to play against 50cc ai forever so you never lose. is it nintendos fault for not locking you out of 50cc after 100 races if you choose to play in this insane manner? someone might find playing against 50cc ai forever fun. someone might find opening all the chests on an easy dungeon floor fun. its not the devs fault if you do these things and dont find them fun because of some weird need to be playing "optimally"
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Mar 8, 2016 03:56
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Awesome! posted:the optimal way to win at mario kart is to play against 50cc ai forever so you never lose. is it nintendos fault for not locking you out of 50cc after 100 races if you choose to play in this insane manner? The better analogy with Mario Kart would be something like snaking. Getting that dash boost constantly is the optimal way to play, but for some that's not very fun as opposed to trying to just race normally.
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Mar 8, 2016 04:06
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Awesome! posted:the optimal way to win at mario kart is to play against 50cc ai forever so you never lose. is it nintendos fault for not locking you out of 50cc after 100 races if you choose to play in this insane manner? I think it's dangerous to fall into the trap of telling someone "No, your way of having fun is bad, and you're wrong for doing so", unless it involves kiddy diddling or something equally wrong.
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Mar 8, 2016 04:14
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fwiw i think the lootsplosion on trivial dungeons is an elegant solution. too bad the optimal way to play forces me to go hit each one at the beginning of a new man 
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Mar 8, 2016 04:19
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Awesome, this is baffling coming from you because you're always so accepting of others having fun. So how about this: I find seeing new things and areas in DCSS fun, but if I die before finishing the lair every time then I'll get bored and stop playing. Knowing this, I intentionally play slower and closer to optimal for my character so I'm less likely to die and more likely to see fun stuff. However, even though my end-goal is fun, playing optimally is hella boring a lot of the time in DCSS so I complain that exploring everything right is boring. See: MuSu
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Mar 8, 2016 04:29
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I don't think snaking is the right Mario Kart analogy either. More like "every minute you hold down the Z button before a race makes your kart 10% faster this Grand Prix" but the scoreboard doesn't mention how much Z buttoning anyone did. The vast majority of games can be trivially beaten by some combination of learning spoilers, precisely memorizing/working on executing a sequence (bullet hells, most platformers), and grinding (defined as some low/no risk action that makes your avatar stronger without a functional upper bound). The neat thing about most well-designed roguelikes is that none of these are true. Beating a roguelike is actually a well-defined challenge that requires an unavoidable amount of system mastery. For those of us who play for mastery, this is a really neat thing! "Well, gosh, just don't play it that way" is an annoying argument, because a lot of time the grinding elements are just a matter of degree. So now I have to figure out what the line is for a "satisfying" game experience. That shouldn't be my job - that should be the job of the game designer. I think the analogy that should enter common parlance is going to the gym. Many people go to the gym to lift the weights over their head twenty times, and they can put whatever poundage they want on it to make sure it gets over their head. Sure, have fun. But some of us want the experience of a designer saying "I certifying that lifting 300 pounds is an attainable goal, even if it's gonna be hard" and then working ourselves to be able to lift 300 pounds. Now suppose there's a balloon attached to the weight. As it inflates, the weight gets lighter. If I only have a minute to pump the balloon, I'm going to become a master at pumping the balloon - because that's part of the challenge and factored in to the 300 pounds. Now I have two skills I need to combine to lift the weight. But if I just have a single balloon that gradually inflates over time, the experience is shot. You can't say "well, just don't focus on inflating your balloon" because very often some measure of balloon inflating is inevitable (experience, loot) So when I lose, I have no real feedback - I could have won by playing better, but I also could have won by waiting for my balloon to inflate a bit more. And end game achievements for games rarely adjust for how much grinding you did on your avatar, so I can't even be proud when I lift the 300 pounds, because I very rarely have solid feedback about how much or little my balloon was inflated. Unless it's a system I can disengage with entirely (e.g a No Items run) then I'm always going to have the unsatisfying experience of lifting the weight and not knowing how much was me getting stronger and how much was the balloon. I want to know that lifting that 300 pound weight really means something - that my strength, and my skills at inflating the balloon under time pressure, have reached a certain level. Okay, that analogy got a little strained, but I think it's needed. Without the balloon, it's easy to say "Why does it matter if people can put on as light of weights as they want - you can just use the heavy ones yourself". But that only works if the weights are well-defined, static, and I have a clear and meaningful goal. Most genres don't provide this. But well-designed roguelikes very often do. When I say "I 15-runed in Crawl", it means something. It was a goal I had to strain to reach and I had no shortcuts available to me. You know that I didn't just read the Gamefaqs guide, or camp the rat spawn, or just practice the boss fights until I could do them in my sleep. I 15-runed the only way you can ever 15 rune - I got as good as I needed to get against a game that offered me no easy way out. I don't think you need to be a HOM to appreciate that.
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Mar 8, 2016 04:52
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madjackmcmad posted:Every player plays differently, although there are a few overarching trends. You're choosing to be bored and invincible -- it is not the optimal play style, but getting each and every treasure chest makes you feel good, and you can't be blamed for that. Temple dungeons are a problem for you in that regard, and I'm not sure what to do about it. Honestly, the simplest solution would probably be just making chests less valuable to open in lower difficulty areas by taking away any chance for level-independent valuable loot (like skill tomes). At that point, chests would only be valuable to open in these easier dungeons if the player is desperate for finding any sort of upgrade to their gear, which shouldn't happen thanks to towns and the upgrade hammers at the academy. Of course, they would still be opening them because loot exploding out of them is fun, but they probably wouldn't go out and hunt down every single chest on a level for that.
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Mar 8, 2016 04:57
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Chakan posted:Awesome, this is baffling coming from you because you're always so accepting of others having fun. So how about this: i think your example is different. saying you play slower and closer to optimal for your character isnt the same as saying optimal play is grinding trivial poo poo. you need to be at least somewhat cautious with most classes in most roguelikes in order to not die. you might have more fun with a different class (i dont play dcss so i have no idea)
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Mar 8, 2016 06:05
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The thing is there's no clear line between "grinding" and playing normally. If you play a game where you can get significant advantages by playing under-challenging content you can easily end up doing that without ever consciously deciding to, and having to constantly ask "did the devs make a sensible difficulty curve or am I getting out of sync" sucks. It takes up attention that could be applied to more interesting tasks/challenges. Also, if you make a game where easy paths to winning exist, you decrease a) the challenge level of the entire game and b) how psychologically gratifying it is to win. This is bad for games where you compete for score, it's bad for games where winning is supposed to be rare and significant, it's bad for games that are prized for their difficulty -- roguelikes are all of these things. As for the theoretical guy who grinds for fun -- if they find it intrinsically entertaining to mow down weak enemies, they don't need to be extrinsically rewarded for it. If they don't find it intrinsically entertaining, then it's not really the grinding they enjoy -- it's the progression itself. If you enjoy progression without risk, permadeath is useless cruft to you and you shouldn't be playing roguelikes; MMOs were made for people like you / that kind of mood. There's no shame in that, it just calls for completely contradictory design goals compared to what roguelikes set out to achieve.
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Mar 8, 2016 06:46
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:The thing is there's no clear line between "grinding" and playing normally. If you play a game where you can get significant advantages by playing under-challenging content you can easily end up doing that without ever consciously deciding to
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Mar 8, 2016 06:49
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Rutibex posted:It would be called a "Tactical RPG". Rogue-likes only let you control one character. I didn't realize tactical RPGs have procedural generation, open worlds, and permanent death. Or, are you holding onto a much older definition of Roguelike? Which is a nebulous term that's evolved over the years.
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Mar 8, 2016 06:55
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Awesome! posted:who is talking about significant advantages That's what grinding means; low risk, high reward. If the reward isn't high, there's no problem. e: although I should add that depending on what's at stake, any reward at all might be "high" Turtlicious posted:I didn't realize tactical RPGs have procedural generation, open worlds, and permanent death. What you're describing isn't evolution, it's speciation. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Mar 8, 2016 |
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Mar 8, 2016 06:56
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hito posted:"Well, gosh, just don't play it that way" is an annoying argument, because a lot of time the grinding elements are just a matter of degree. So now I have to figure out what the line is for a "satisfying" game experience. That shouldn't be my job - that should be the job of the game designer. The other side of this argument is "My game idea is superior, it's really elegant and clever, players just need to realize that" and while I'm sure someone out there can make a case for it, that poo poo is way too ivory tower academic for me and feels like the opposite of fun gaming.
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Mar 8, 2016 07:07
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:That's what grinding means; low risk, high reward. If the reward isn't high, there's no problem.
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Mar 8, 2016 07:11
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Awesome! posted:grinding is the repeating of an activity. if the reward is high then grinding might actually be the optimal way to play the game which i think i have been pretty clear that i am against. if you are killing lvl 2 mobs at lvl 10 you should be getting lvl 2 crap that is basically worthless to you at lvl 10 Okay, in that case can you explain your objection to this statement: Unimpressed posted:If the optimal way of playing isn't fun, then you have to choose between fun and optimal. in more detail?
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Mar 8, 2016 07:15
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i dont have a problem with that statement in itself. i have a problem when it implies that the optimal way of playing is grinding
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Mar 8, 2016 07:17
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Awesome! posted:i dont have a problem with that statement in itself. i have a problem when it implies that optimal way of playing is grinding I don't think you, I, and Unimpressed actually disagree about this subject at all. 
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Mar 8, 2016 07:19
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Awesome! posted:i dont have a problem with that statement in itself. i have a problem when it implies that the optimal way of playing is grinding Well, how about I ask then, what is the optimal way of playing dmans? When going into a certain dungeon, how much of the first level should I clear before going down to the next level? As little as I need to before the next stairs downwards?, every single last square or somewhere in the middle? You see, the first two are easy (though the second one is what bored and annoyed me out of the game), but if the answer is somewhere in the middle, then what mechanism or indication does the game provide the player? Bottom line, optimal, unless you're being deliberately obtuse, is pretty clear in this context. It is getting as much advantage as possible from a level before going on to the next one. And dmans provides no indication that optimal in this case isn't clearing out the whole level. Which is tedious given the short LOS, lack of autoexplore and convoluted level design.
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Mar 8, 2016 07:53
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if you are getting bored clearing one single level in a dungeon just go play a different game man i dont even know why we are having this conversation
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Mar 8, 2016 08:00
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really though when you find the stairs you pop down and see what it looks like. if you feel comfortable you proceed. if not you turn back.
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Mar 8, 2016 08:02
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