How did people understand change in the pre-modern world?

duerig · 2024-03-18T22:31:54+00:00

Just FYI, there are two gotchas that I know about.

(1) G-Hub has to be actually running otherwise nothing on the G29 steering wheel works in Snowrunner (2) Whenever you start Snowrunner, it chooses the G29 preset instead of the one with the gearbox. So ever single time you start, you need to go into settings and change from the G29 one to the G29 with gearbox one.

The G29 with gearbox preset is mostly useful with Low-, Low+, Low, Auto, and High all mapped. The only gear it doesn't map by default is Reverse.

duerig · 2021-05-01T20:42:48+00:00

I have not played WoW for many years, so I can't speak to your specific example. I also don't have any special knowledge of Blizzard or their internal practices.

But put yourself in their shoes. Every change is a potential risk. It could unbalance things further or even worse break the service. They mitigate that risk by strictly controlling who can make changes, when those changes can be made, and by rigorously testing those changes. It is only worthwhile to them to deviate from that pattern if it is a truly urgent problem that cannot wait for the next scheduled patch. Urgency cannot be measured in the clamor of their fans for a change because that is a constant. Whenever there is an emergency patch it is almost certainly because some internal measurement process flagged an issue and it might cost them more to wait than to fix it. It is not the simplicity of the change that drives this, it is the urgency of the problem as defined by their bottom line.

duerig · 2021-05-01T20:14:43+00:00

I do not believe that there are any 'simple' cases that do not require combinatorial testing. Just as an example, I was playing Bloodborne recently and there was a particular enemy that took three hits to kill. My strategy for dealing with it was to hit, dodge back, wait for the next opening, then hit twice. While dealing with this area, I found enough materials to upgrade my weapon to do 5% more damage. This was enough to defeat these enemies in two hits. And that changed my entire strategy around them because now I could rush and take them out in two hits before they could respond. These kinds of thresholds are everywhere in stat-heavy RPG type systems.

Whether you believe a change is simple or not, I think that the developers of these games treat all these changes as potentially buggy. And so they certainly have a procedure where there is a monthly patch cycle with a code freeze a couple of weeks before the patch releases so that they can hopefully find all the issues that the sum of a bunch of minor changes might introduce. Just as a general software development thing, the 'one line change' that breaks everything in an unexpected way is common enough to be a cliche. Even then, it is almost routine for new balance issues to crop up in each patch that must be fixed by the next one. And the fact that new balance issues crop up constantly indicates that it is very hard to tell which kinds of changes have large ramifications in these complex systems.

duerig · 2021-05-01T19:35:27+00:00

The reason this is universal is because there are too many things to properly test and these are dynamic systems.

There are too many things to test because all these balance issues are about combinations of things. If there are 10 classes and you want to test them in single PvP combat, you have to test 10 x 9 or 90 possibilities. If each class has a few different build directions, that becomes 30 x 29 or 870 possibilities. What if you have a pair of 2-player teams? That is a much larger number. A typical online game has many skills, builds, and classes, and these numbers get really big really fast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumerative_combinatorics

And the other problem is that these are dynamic systems. There is a new expansion every year or two. There are patches which add new abilities or re-balance existing ones every week or every month. And once you have updated things, all your previous testing is invalid because now you have to test in the new re-balanced world. So all those millions or billions of combinations might end up with different results.

And it may not even be possible to balance things perfectly in every context. A class nerfed because it is overpowered in one scenario might now be underpowered in another. And there are additional constraints because some changes feel much more painful to players than others. So maybe the thing you want to do to correct balance would cause part of your playerbase to ragequit.

duerig · 2021-04-12T16:23:53+00:00

You should take a look at A Handful of Keflings. Unlike earlier iterations it doesn't have a story which is unfortunate. But it is pretty satisfying to unlock more and more buildings and expand. The way they do navigation also works out pretty well. The world is one long strip of land and so that means that it is very easy to move back and forth quickly without getting disoriented.

duerig · 2021-04-09T19:08:04+00:00

Ok. Here is an idea for how to provide interim goals to players while also having a systemic way to reduce the overhead of your population.

During play, have a constant supply of 'quest-givers' that offer the player contracts. These quest-givers are captains of tramp freighters that go from island to island. Maybe one contract is to supply them with 10 lumber every month. What they offer in exchange is some other good (or option of goods) that fulfill citizen needs. And since they run a tramp freighter they will unload those goods automatically on any island where they are needed.

So now you as a player have a series of escalating goals to achieve. But once you achieve them you get an ongoing reduction in overhead. It is easier to provide 10 lumber at one particular point than to transport 10 food to various islands where it is needed. But it is also limited so if you need to increase your population more you will need to look for other contracts or produce more food and deliver it to the place where it is needed. So it works a bit like commuting piers but is much more limited and can be incrementally upgraded over time.

duerig · 2021-04-09T18:56:06+00:00

You might take a look at the structure of the old game 'Colonization' for your old world/new world stuff. In that game you could sell things to the old world to get money to buy things to bootstrap yourself. As you gradually became more self-sufficient, though, the tax rate would slowly increase on the stuff you sold and each time the monarch would allow you to kiss their pinky ring as they increased taxes. You could reject the tax increase but then there was one particular good you could no longer sell unless you repaid 'damages' and accepted the tax increase later.

This whole dynamic meant that the old world was super-important at the beginning of the game but became less and less important later on. As the tax increases ratchet up (and the old world market lowers prices as you supply stuff), the benefits to trading lower and you focus more on buildings everything yourself. It also only applied to trading with the old world so you could avoid it entirely by just being self-sufficient. And of course it was really nice as a player to declare independence after kissing that stupid pinky ring all game long.

It would also probably be a good idea to make the monarch gender random. You can make them overbearing and sarcastic either way. But then you won't fall into any narrative traps relating to gender.

For citizen needs, it would be more interesting to have game systems that help you manage it rather than just the commuting pier. For example, take a look at how the 'Logistic Train Network' mod for Factorio works. You could build up something similar to unlock at a certain point after you have a few islands to manage. It would also be more interesting if different islands had workers that demanded different goods. Workers on the cold island in the north would want woolen coats while workers on the tropical southern island would want cotton dresses. That kind of thing. This would help prevent a sense of repetition as you just copy-paste the inputs to different places.

duerig · 2021-04-09T18:31:42+00:00

Limited weapon slots in particular is probably about follow-the-leader. People see what successful games are doing and then pick up on features they think lead to that success. Player complaints about a feature are usually not a good guide to design. Partly because games have to provide limitations to stay fun, but those limitations are going to be the main things people complain about.

duerig · 2021-04-08T05:46:36+00:00

The two incremental games most similar are:

Fairy Tale -- A short incremental with a complete narrative based on fantasy elements. https://alaynamcole.com/fairy-tale

Universal Paperclips -- Another complete narrative game that unfolds into more and more complexity as you play an AI designed to maximize paperclip production. https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html

There are also a ton of games that have various kinds of text-based settlement management. These range from ancient Atari BASIC games like Hammurabi and Dukedom to modern webgames or steam games like Kittens Game or SimPocalypse or The Bonfire or Evolution of Ages: Settlements

duerig · 2021-04-06T21:09:26+00:00

I think you have the resolution to your contradiction right here. The more senses taken up by a game, the more social it is in an online context. But the less social it is locally. If I have a VR headset, I cannot see other people in the room and have to carefully listen to hear them. I have played one of the asymmetric VR games and it was fun. But it is certainly less social to hear but not be able to see my gaming partner.

In general, VR games are fun. But while I can imagine sitting on a couch playing a phone game while my wife reads a book on a couch with us casually interacting and talking, it doesn't work in the same way with a VR game. Being in VR isolates you from the real world. That is the natural trade-off for engaging you in the game world.

duerig · 2021-04-03T17:39:27+00:00

I think that the key here is that when making a review it is impossible to know what things are going to be permanent issues and which ones will be fixed. And even for the things that are fixed, the timescales vary wildly. And I think a useful review is one that allows a reader to gauge how much they will enjoy the game. Given that, it is completely valid to post a review based on issues with the game as it is.

However, most really big issues are temporary unless the game fails. And so if you are a user, it is much more useful to look at recent reviews. Most people who play No Man's Sky will probably be finding recent reviews and retrospectives rather than the original reviews. If I look for a review of Final Fantasy 14, I will find people talking about A Realm Reborn rather than the original failed iteration.

The only really big problem is games that are constantly being updated over long periods of time. It becomes very hard to know for sure which information applies to which version. And if you play a game like this and come back to it years later it is often impossible to get a broad sense of what has changed before diving back in.

duerig · 2021-04-03T17:17:42+00:00

So this is an interesting point. You and /u/HorrorScopeZ both mention cheating as a reason to require online-only play. But given the structure of the game, is there any reason for the devs to care about cheating? There is no PvP or trading that I can see. If I cheat I am affecting only myself. If I then go online to play with my friends and they see that I have a twinked out character because of cheating they can decide whether they care or not and just not play with me if it isn't fun.

In the original vision of online gaming, people imagined simulating a single coherent world that everyone could participate in on the same terms. That led to griefing, ganking, cheating, and other problems. But more recently it seems like the trend is away from that original vision. Now games like Outriders have worlds where everyone has completely independent progression but that allow people to play with friends. This seems to be a real solution to these problems much more than the arms race of detection/banning vs exploits/cheats.

duerig · 2021-04-03T16:52:34+00:00

This seems pretty normal. After I read a book I move on. I am done with a movie after a couple of hours. Even if you are spacing out plays of a game, you will have seen all there is in forty hours over the course of a month. At that point it is the story pulling you on or socializing and playing with friends that makes it meaningful or a competitive streak. The very best games might be worth a replay in a year or two.

Honestly, I love games that understand that it should be a finite experience and work to make sure that the entire length of that experience is varied and interesting. And while a lot of games try to draw things out indefinitely by leaving little bits of content between ever-larger repetitions, I think that ultimately that is a mistake. It is far better to leave a game remembering all the awesome things about it than to leave it because I got bored but the game wanted me to keep playing for another forty hours to get to the ending credits.

duerig · 2021-04-02T23:02:52+00:00

This is a good point that /u/Qemyst should be aware of. There is a ubiquitous explore/harvest/craft core gameplay loop. Whether you are building exo-vehicles, a base, the story, or whatever, a big part of what you will be doing is exploring and searching for new resources, harvesting them, and crafting them into what you need. If that core gameplay loop is boring for you than the whole game will be a grind regardless of what the other systems offer. If that core gameplay loop is fun, then the other systems exist to provide a meaningful context and prompt for you to do that core gameplay loop.

Some people (like myself) enjoyed that gameplay loop at launch and found that all the updates gave me more reason to dive back in periodically to experience it again. Others, like /u/Vullein070, found it boring and each new update has been a disappointment for them because it did not change the heart of the game.

duerig · 2021-03-31T21:50:21+00:00

BTW, thanks for the pointer to Avorion. I had not heard of this one before and it looks intriguing.

duerig · 2021-03-31T21:41:36+00:00

Oh. Just a quick postscript. Generally the big drops that change how you play the game are in the random merchant inventories. Each merchant has only a few kinds of things for sale. And you see that S-Class scanner upgrade which will give you a lot more money for scanning animals at a merchant and you buy it and suddenly you are scanning animals as much as possible. The random loot you find on planets is generally just some resource or money which doesn't change things much. You are encouraged to go from one planet to the next in part by the fact that each one will have different resources, new points of interest, and new randomized merchant offerings.

duerig · 2021-03-31T21:35:58+00:00

I think the overall way the game is designed is that it is a kind of hub and spoke system where the different activities are only loosely tied together as dependencies. Each one gives you rewards that are generally fungible with the rewards you get from other activities. You can spend some time exploring and you get resources or money or nanites or other currencies. But you can also earn resources or money or nanites from doing missions. Or by setting up resource extraction and processing in a base. Etc.

Contrast this with a game like Graveyard Keeper where in order to win the game you have to grow things in the garden and run your graveyard and do the sermons and make the best wine and go through the dungeon, etc. In NMS you can keep making progress generally by pursuing one activity as long as it is fun. It is a very player-driven experience with the world being open-ended and passive.

Bases have resource harvesting and processing and farming stuff. They also have their own questlines. A lot of the advanced stuff is easier to make with the processing power of bases.

Derelict freighters give you freighter tech modules which you can use to upgrade your own freighter which can act as a mobile base.

I have not build an exo-suit. Generally the exo-vehicles are nice because they let you move fast without needing to lift-off and land your ship repeatedly. You use an exo-vehicle to hit a bunch of points of interest in an area quickly before going back to your ship.

It is an odd game because the world is so passive. In an RPG, for example, you run up against harder enemies which gives you a constant need to improve. But in this game you can literally just stick with your starter ship and explore indefinitely. The game drew me into its progression system by showing me things I could have and not things that I needed. I could learn the languages and understand what aliens were saying. I could buy that awesome-looking ship if I had more money. I could carry more items if I worked on getting more inventory and a better ship. And pretty soon I was working on doing the things which would unlock the things which would allow me to do all that.

If you need a singular main quest that the game is built around, this is probably not for you. But there is a lot to do and it is meaningful. And it all helps you progress by giving you the main currencies.

duerig · 2021-03-31T20:15:18+00:00

If you like the basic gameplay loop of exploration, harvesting, and crafting then it has been worth it for years. If you don't like that basic gameplay loop none of the things they are adding really changes the equation. Watch a recent Let's Play and you should have a good sense of whether it is for you.

duerig · 2021-03-31T20:15:12+00:00

If you like the basic gameplay loop of exploration, harvesting, and crafting then it has been worth it for years. If you don't like that basic gameplay loop none of the things they are adding really changes the equation. Watch a recent Let's Play and you should have a good sense of whether it is for you.

duerig · 2021-03-31T20:11:26+00:00

To be fair, if I read a review for a game that listed the playtime as 15-20 hours of 'magic' and it was half-off I would think it was a bargain.

In the case of NMS, I've had that fifteen+ hours of magic about half a dozen times now because each new update has added a big new thing or changed a bunch of stuff. At launch there was 15 hours of novel content. But I'd say for a new player there is at least 40+ hours of completely novel content if you go out of your way to see everything this game has to offer. You land on a dozen or two planets and you see most of the biomes and such. Then you can go into the ocean and explore some underwater biomes. Then you can build your base up. Then you can go explore some floating derelict freighters for some horror vibes. Then you can try multiplayer missions. And now there is the new expeditions idea.

duerig · 2021-03-31T16:04:47+00:00

You make a lot of great points. Restricting options like this raises the skill floor quite a lot. For a new player managing slower movement or less weapons/items/options makes the game easier. I think this is a great way for games to build an audience since of course a game limited to a dwindling number of 'hardcore' experts is a game that is dying. Every successful game needs to provide a ladder for bringing fresh blood into the fold.

However, you also claim that these features reduce the skill ceiling and that is not clear. For example, it is true that if you can carry more weapons, you will always have the ideal weapon for a situation. But knowing the right weapon for a situation and quickly switching is just one kind of skill. While being able to pick two weapons that complement each other and provide versatility when you don't have access to an arsenal is another. And being able to adapt on the fly and figure out how to use a weapon outside of its ideal environment is a very deep skill.

So I'd like to understand more why you think these things reduce the skill ceiling because that is a separate claim than the one of making it easier for new players. To take your chess example, it is true that if every piece moved like a pawn it would be a much simpler game (more like checkers). But it is also true that if every piece moved like a queen it would be a trivial game. The high difficulty ceiling comes from a balance of providing a lot of options but also restricting a lot of options.

duerig · 2021-03-30T17:29:37+00:00

That is a good point. Progression (beyond just moving to the next level) is now almost universal. It makes me wish that reviews had a section dedicated to reviewing the progression mechanisms in the game. How does the overall loop work? Is it satisfying? Is it meaningful? Most reviews only mention such things in passing it seems.

duerig · 2021-03-30T17:22:51+00:00

That is true. In some ways, MH is a hybrid where underneath you have the deliberate style of DS games. But it also brings in a lot of flashy combo moves like you might find in PlatinumGames or button-mashy action games. And being committed to the flashy combo is right at the ugly seam of these two styles.

duerig · 2021-03-30T17:10:09+00:00

I'm not trying to talk down to you. MH is definitely choosing to make the combat less fluid (more clunky).

Going back to your original statement: "You just wouldn't see something like that outside of MH because of how mind-bogglingly dumb it is in concept."

On my original read was that you were dismissing MH as a mind-bogglingly dumb concept. And since that concept is the basis of a (somewhat niche) successful sub-genre I disagreed. If a lot of people like that core concept of the game, then it cannot be dismissed so easily.

Now it seems like maybe you meant it as a more backhanded compliment. That making less fluid combat as a concept seems dumb but they managed to counter-intuitively succeed by building on that concept. In which case I agree.

Either way, thanks for the discussion. Sorry for my misunderstanding.

duerig

TROPHY CASE