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Original post by Wavinator Maybe it could be argued that was it lost is the player's quality time. If you skip dialog or miss out on something, you're losing out on potentially interesting gameplay, and that possibly reduces the experience as a whole.

If the player is always rewarded, there's no incentive for them to engage the game with any sort of effort. You have to take away those rewards when they fail, to do the opposite.

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Original post by tolkienccg Hi, I am new to this forum, this is actually my first post.

Welcome to the forums!

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If the player catches on that the "risks" involved are only illusions, they are likely to lose their sense of immersion and their desire to continue the game as a whole.

This and the example of cheats and deadly floor triggers were on my mind when I posted. I think to a certain point its inevitable. Every time the player loses the game the illusion is peeled back just a bit and some immersion goes away. Players (consciously or not) always try to continuously work out the underlying system as they play so they can exploit it to maximum advantage. So at a certain level, we're always involved in trying to keep our disbelief suspended, always trying to remain "inside" the frame of whatever gameplay context we've been given so that we can access the game on an emotional level. (This might explain why some less mature players go straight for the cheats-- maybe the illusion engages emotions such as vulnerability that they have a hard time dealing with).

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Original post by Way Walker I think the quote is just another way of expressing the idea that a game should be as hard as possible with the player still winning (an idea I've seen promoted a few times on this forum).

Interesting Deus Ex example. It made me think about my experience with Thief. The first time I was goofing around (dropped a bottle of wine because I thought, from playing previous games, that it didn't matter) and had a guard come barreling down the hallway to investigate, I was hooked because it felt like I could really lose big. I'd have to play Deus Ex to be sure, but I think if the AI forgot about me I'd be sorely tempted to abuse it-- thus unraveling my own immersion.

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I think the problem with the "blown out of the sky" scenario is mostly that there's no recovery. You get blasted once, and you're done. It doesn't matter if you were seeing a steady gain, or even just a net gain over time, you're done now. Sure, it may be fair in the sense that you had just as much chance of doing that to your opponent, but that doesn't make it more fun.

But I wonder-- if there was some level of recovery, could you imagine still having a rule system that was so drastic that you chose not to defy it?

I was playing Escape Velocity on strict mode where death is final unless you have an escape pod, in which case you lose your beautiful starship and start over with whatever cash you had and a lowly shuttle. After a few deaths, I noticed that I began to fear certain regions of the game. (At one point I even caught myself reviewing a mission and saying "%$*&#! that! I'm not going north, there're pirates up there!"

The reason I relate this is that I usually have to work to stay immersed. I think stuff like hit boxes and pathfinding is never far away in my mind while I'm playing. So when a system is both brutal and fair grabs my attention because I know I'm not being coddled-- I beat it on my own merits as a player.

Of course, it's entirely subjective. I used to cry foul over the Lucas Arts space sim difficulty curve all the time, so go figure.

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Original post by caffiene I think the problem with the question is that "true" risk is very vague.

True, and I had a hard time nailing this one down. What I was trying to get out is whether or not victory is assured through the fundamental underlying mechanics of the game.

Take combat system design and weapon distribution: Common wisdom says that it's more exciting to be given a steady progression of arms and armor that assure you'll defeat progressively difficult foes. The player is both being trained and guaranteed victory.

What made me propose the question in the first place was the frustration of trying to develop a trading system for a space trading game that rivaled combat in terms of excitement. Usually it's "find port, buy/sell good, rinse and repeat" with little anticipation or even fear.

Now common wisdom would say that I should have progressively assured trades that grant the player more and more money. But what if trade was consistently fraught with danger, some of it catastrophic? It would be the equivalent of making a heavy investment and losing your home to a wild swing in the stock market. (This would only work if the player was convincingly required to maintain positive cashflow, btw).

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Original post by QuantifyFun If real, true, tangible risk weren't exciting, Las Vegas would not exist...

I admit I didn't read everything, so I hope I'm not being redundant. I think this is a really good point, because the reason Las Vegas exists isn't necessarily the risk... it's what you get if you beat the odds. While most casual gamers would probably just like to check out the world and have a sense of accomplishment by the illusion of risk, like Las Vegas, they'd be more inclined to take that big risk if there was that big reward, no?

[edit] but like Las Vegas, perhaps it should be the gamer's choice whether to take the risk, instead of the designer's?

Cheers
-Scott

I do apologize if this has already been brought up, I skipped to the reply field.

I'd visualize the risk as the potential to fall into a hidden pit. If the ability exists to climb back out of the pit (i.e. excluding hardcore/permanent penalties of loss on the player) then eventually you're back on the level you were originally walking along.

Your level of difficulty or "hardcore appeal" could then depend on how quick you make that ascension. A long, drawn out ramp back up to the top would represent the hardcore player's ideal ("I need to keep my edge, otherwise it's a long road back to normal") while a nice steep ladder would be more on the casual player's side of things ("Oh shoot, I goofed up, but let me climb back out of this debt hole with a couple quick trades and I'll make sure to keep my eyes open from here on out")

To relate this to your more black/white question: I think the illusion of risk far outweighs actual risk in terms of enjoyment: no one wants to just get stuck in the pit forever...even if there's massive debt or major injury that needs healing, as long as the concept exists that it can be overcome then I'd wager most people would consider the risk worth it.

I think the most balanced risk/penalty/reward system would be one that is gradual. Rather than miss out on one huge reward for failing, the player can miss out on some potential to obtain a reward, or miss out on an amount of that reward.

For example, if you were to measure the player's performance and pay them cash that's exactly equal to their effectiveness in the game, you wouldn't even need player health or death to provide an incentive to play as perfectly as possible. When they mess up a little, it's a small amount of payment removed. When they mess up 50% of the time, it's 50% of the payment removed. They're never flat out biffed in the face for making a mistake, but the incentive to do well is always there.

For a realistic example, this could be done with a mechanized player character that can't be destroyed, but requires money to repair its damage (it would need a lot of damage potential to avoid "hitting bottom" and removing all incentives to play well).

This type of system wouldn't provide as much suspense as total death, but it would still be fun. It could also be combined with a "minimal death" system to get some of both worlds.

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Original post by ddn3 I disagree with the original premsise that people are mostly risk averse. I think people have built within them risk taking straegies and actually seek risk out instintively. From a biological standpoint the winners are the ones which actually take risks, ie hunting, mate competition and other risky behaviors can be found in the natural world.

"Risk-averse" doesn't mean "avoiding all risks". It merely means that people will prefer to reduce the uncertainty of a reward more than they prefer to increase the value of a reward by the same proportion. eg. People will prefer $1000 guaranteed than a 10% chance of $10,000.

There is also a biological suggestion that men are more risk-seeking whereas women are more risk-averse. But in typical economic terms, people are usually risk-averse to some degree.

Unfortunately, the original quote is quite misleading: "They don't really want to take a risk, which by its very nature means they could lose and lose big." This is wrong - it's not that they could "lose big", it's that they could "fail to win big". The difference between these two situations is crucial to understanding risk.

I think exploiting someone's general risk-aversion tendency could make for an interesting game, by offering clear gains if people take the riskier strategy. But if it's too obvious that way is more profitable on average, then people will just always attempt that, and use save/load to get around it. Perhaps the cost associated to the risk needs to be obscured or delayed in some sense to discourage simply repeating the process until you 'win'.

I agree with Sneftel about quickloads making it an illusion. The original quote is correct imho. People don't like risk, but they want an illusion.

Saves aren't really about allowing shorter playing sessions, but minimizing risks. The original Wizardry's saved at every major step, so you never had to worry about a time sink. But if you died, you had to restart from scratch. Just ask yourself, imagine if you could save in any game any time you wanted too, but all your saves would be erased if you lost. Would you honestly like the game?

Save points are a comprimise that allow some value of risk, while not making a game too difficult. Maybe a comprimise of quick saves, with the DS style soft-save, which allows you to save anywhere, but is erased when you load it. Allows the risk of having to go back to a save point, but doesn't force you into 5 hour play sessions. (I chose save points as a good comprimise, because often times they can be 20-30 minutes in between, so if you lose, some time is lost, but I don't think you need to force the risk of old games which force a restart).

On the other hand, rewarding players can be useful, but it really depends upon the genre. In RPG's for instance, it's a terrible system, because an item shouldn't just appear for a limited time only without a justifiable reason.

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Original post by ddn3 I disagree with the original premsise that people are mostly risk averse. I think people have built within them risk taking straegies and actually seek risk out instintively. From a biological standpoint the winners are the ones which actually take risks, ie hunting, mate competition and other risky behaviors can be found in the natural world. It could very well be that game playing, engages those risk play strageieis and that is one reason why we play games (a form of pratice for the risk strategies). -ddn

I think that most people are risk adverse. While it may seem that he who dares, wins, under that logic, gambling would be profitable. A real risk is one where the chance of pay off is lower than the chance of success. The people who have survived, will be the ones who didn't take on a tiger with their bare hands, but instead, stuck with smaller animals.

Most people don't take risks in real life, so I would agree with the statement entirely.

Also, I would agree that games should keep you on the edge on failure without you ever failing - a very ambitious goal. Creating the illusion is key, as, by the time you actually punish the player, you have already lost. What I mean by that convoluted sentence is that a player should never die, so spend the time making a good illusion rather than a strong punishment.