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Negative Re-inforcement

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FrikaC Site Admin Joined: 08 Oct 2004 Posts: 947 |

Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 10:33 am Post subject: Negative Re-inforcement |

LordHavoc was raving the other day about how Prey doesn't make you lose progress in the game upon death, because you respawn back in place you died. Having not played Prey, I can't really discuss the effects of this on the gameplay, but to me personally think this is anathema to the traditional ideas of negative re-inforcement for doing "the wrong thing".
Clearly games need a wrong way and a right way to play them. If you stack too high in tetris, you're clearly disadvantaged in the time you have to react and may eventually lose the game, ending play. In first person shooters, death often resets you to the beginning of the level, thus you need to be careful not to die. (Quick Saves can be used to avoid this, but the average player will most likely not bother). RPGs often penalize stats, take away gold or items, or teleport the player far from where he died.
In a deathmatch, all your weapons are taken away and may be given to the person who killed you. I dunno, just something to think about.

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spamalam Joined: 10 Jul 2006 Posts: 30 |

Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 10:20 pm Post subject: Re: Negative Re-inforcement |

FrikaC wrote:
LordHavoc was raving the other day about how Prey doesn't make you lose progress in the game upon death, because you respawn back in place you died.

I think the reality here is that 3d realms realised that FPS are a piece of piss these days and they just didn't impose that tedium on the user.
The how many times you die can be enforced at the end as a statistic and the players rating. Therefore the challenge isn't lost for 'hardcore' gamers since they will of course want their "deaths" set to 0. ala. Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past which stamps a big 'number of deaths' on you that won't go away no matter how hard you scrub.
I think that for prey, it was the absolute right thing to do. It worked as a devise to progress the story, it prevented Lara Croft-fustration (that's where the skanky b*tch doesn't jump when you hit the jump button) and the way spirit walk was implemented into the story works.
People just quicksave and quickload, Prey's system just meant you don't need to bother.

Quote:
Having not played Prey, I can't really discuss the effects of this on the gameplay, but to me personally think this is anathema to the traditional ideas of negative re-inforcement for doing "the wrong thing".

Just counteraction to the jump-button tedium and an admission to the increasing ease of games.

Quote:
Clearly games need a wrong way and a right way to play them.

I'm not quite sure they do, it depends on the aims and methods. Take black and white 2? is the right way to feed your peasants or to chuck them at enemy villages? Both are right.
It depends on the openness and style of the game. Adventure games have different aims and motives to FPSs.
I can't wait to play a completely open game, they are just incredibly hard to balance, but we'll get there eventually.
Of course there are rudementary paradigms, the FPS one is simple, its "Don't die", which is countered by Quick Save and Quick Load. Of course if you remove Quick Save and Quick Load, *cough* Alien vs Predator *cough*, you get players screaming in rage, and this is usually patched immediately, *cough* Alien vs Predator *cough*.
The problem is, if youre paradigm is "Don't Die", you can put something like a crappy ledge jumping sequence.

Quote:
If you stack too high in tetris, you're clearly disadvantaged in the time you have to react and may eventually lose the game, ending play. In first person shooters, death often resets you to the beginning of the level, thus you need to be careful not to die. (Quick Saves can be used to avoid this, but the average player will most likely not bother). RPGs often penalize stats, take away gold or items, or teleport the player far from where he died.
In a deathmatch, all your weapons are taken away and may be given to the person who killed you. I dunno, just something to think about.

Yup, well its something that goes around, the types of way to tempt behaviour and the types of ways you should let users do what they want.
Its a bit like multiplayer, co-operative, counter-operative? Its all down to game theory. Personally I think games went the wrong route, co-operative is the way i prefer and usually mod, or acquire mods that enable it. I think multiplayer options need to be thought about a lot more than they are, i hate it how co-op always get shunned
erm... aside

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FrikaC Site Admin Joined: 08 Oct 2004 Posts: 947 |

Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 10:45 pm Post subject: Re: Negative Re-inforcement |

spamalam wrote:
I'm not quite sure they do, it depends on the aims and methods. Take black and white 2? is the right way to feed your peasants or to chuck them at enemy villages? Both are right. It depends on the openness and style of the game. Adventure games have different aims and motives to FPSs.
I can't wait to play a completely open game, they are just incredibly hard to balance, but we'll get there eventually.

I like completely open games in theory, but you wind up with something like Sims - the only objectives you need to attain are the ones you personally supply. This is great for a short while, but it grates rather quickly. After you've 'tried doing' everything, you give up, because you know the mechanics of the game and there's little point in actually progressing to the goals you've set for yourself.
The game works out to be either very mindless (trucks roaming the countryside) or very short once you fully fathom it all... or a combination of both.
Good games, deep games, need a graduated series of disparate goals whith varying obstacles on the road to them. An example is any sort of Real Time Strategy, like you mentioned Black & White 2, rather than be a real example of an open game, black and white 2 provides several paths to the objective of clearing the stage. The right and wrong ways are completely present. You can easily lose by decimating your own population.
Sid Meier's Pirates walks in the fine line between the completely open and the goal-based and I think it does it quite well. Although you can roam around and do what you want, there is a 'story' and a series of varying objectives to reach it. Still present, even with this degree of openess is a 'right' and 'wrong' path in that if you're a miserable pirate your score will be terrible at the end of your career.
I think what I'm saying is most games have clear, rigid wrong and wrong trails - for FPS's, as you put it "Don't die". Others have a less obvious objective and give you several means toward the objective, but they don't eliminate the 'wrong path'.
Games that completely eliminate the tract of failure inherently have no pay off to 'winning' and are thus pointless exercises in...nothing much. Prey treads dangerously close to this catergory, again, from what I heard.

Quote:
Yup, well its something that goes around, the types of way to tempt behaviour and the types of ways you should let users do what they want. Its a bit like multiplayer, co-operative, counter-operative? Its all down to game theory. Personally I think games went the wrong route, co-operative is the way i prefer and usually mod, or acquire mods that enable it. I think multiplayer options need to be thought about a lot more than they are, i hate it how co-op always get shunned
erm... aside

I love coop, and I wish it was in more games.

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HeadThump Joined: 14 May 2006 Posts: 74 Location: Zin |

Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 12:25 am Post subject: |

The return to the spirit world and shoot damned spirits for health points bit does get tedious even in the demo. If the spirit world was fleshed out and presented its own mystery, this method would have worked beautifully as an alternative. *edited a yucky bit of grammar.
Last edited by HeadThump on Tue Aug 01, 2006 4:25 pm; edited 1 time in total

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Labman Joined: 05 Nov 2004 Posts: 51 Location: Brisbane, Australia |

Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 9:20 am Post subject: |

The spirit world does change slightly as you progress through the game. Also I think it worked well as alot of fps's these days have are more focused on story and not just action, i know i dont what to have to see the same parts of the story just because one part of the game is a bitch to get past.

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Quake Matt Joined: 05 Jun 2005 Posts: 129 |

Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 11:35 am Post subject: |

I've only played the demo, so I'm not too informed on Prey, but I do think they've handled dying pretty well. It's basically just a logical extension to quick-saving, but more interesting and thematic. I know it doesn't count so much for Prey, but dying in narrative-driven games really annoys me. Just like Labman said, nothing's worse than seeing the same scene or hearing the same dialogue over and over again, especially if it's an important part of the story. Really ruins the immersion.

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