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Rob Zacny

Episode 334: Comebacks

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Three Moves Ahead 334:

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Comebacks

This week on The Game Design Rountable we have Dirk, David, and Rob talking to - wait, no. This is Three Moves Ahead and Dirk - no Rob - talk to the other Rob. Rob Zacny. I don't even know any more. The days turn into nights which turn into days, nothing but podcasts. Names and titles pass me, topics upon topics. Who can keep track any more? Is this Three Moves Ahead or TGDRT? Another file on the hard drive, another show posted.

Anyway, Rob Daviau and David V. Heron talk to Rob about comebacks in gaming.

Risk: Legacy, Pandemic: Legacy, Chess, Monopoly

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Hey guys, great episode! Comeback mechanics and runaway leaders are some of my favourite game design ideas to think about, so this conversation got my brain spinning a lot.

 

First, some examples of things you guys were talking about:

 

I'm surprised that nobody brought up Dominion when talking about games that try to slow down winners. I don't love Dominion, but I think it's got one of the most elegant solutions to this issue. In Dominion, you use a deck of cards to purchase more cards that enter your deck and make it more efficient. Then you leverage that efficiency to buy victory point cards to  win the game. Except those victory points also enter your deck and do nothing, reducing your efficiency. To make a play at victory, you need to weaken yourself. It's exactly analogous to weighing down a racecar, except in this case the mere act of making the car go fast weighs it down automatically. It's a really brilliant system.

 

David was asking about games that encourage a player to stay in a close second, like in Formula 1. The best example I can think of is one of my favourites, Tammany Hall. The game is about municipal elections and is split into four terms. Each term, players set-up for the elections that will happen across the city at the end of the term. Once the election happens, players gain 1 point for each ward they won. The player who won the most wards becomes the Mayor and gets three extra points. However, the Mayor also has to hand out City Offices to the other players, which makes them stronger during the next term and makes it difficult for the Mayor to hold onto their position. What this means is that, during every election, you either want to win the Mayoralty by such a wide margin that your opponents won't be able to pull you down, or you want to come in second by the slimmest of margins, still holding onto a lot of wards while also getting a City Office. While this might seem strange in other games, it works really well in Tammany Hall because it evokes the feeling of playing politics and understanding that the person in the spotlight isn't always the person in power.

 

Now, some more ideas about how to implement comeback mechanics and limit runway leaders:

 

One thing you guys touched on slightly but that I think deserves closer discussion is that a good way to keep every player in a game throughout it's duration is to limit the degree to which past performance limits or expands future performance. I think baseball is a really good example of this, both on the macro and micro levels. There's a saying that, in baseball, momentum is only as good as tomorrow's starting pitcher. What this means is that it doesn't matter who won yesterday - each game is it's own self-contained possibility space. Even if the 1927 Yankees were the best team ever, the fact that they keep winning didn't make it more likely that they would continue to do so, outside the fact that it was indicative of the skill of the players. Winning one game didn't make the next team the had to play worse; it didn't mean they started with more runs or had to record more outs. Likewise, each play in a baseball game is only slightly related to the plays before and after it. Of course, whether a pitcher is behind or ahead in the count matters for the batter's prospects and getting runners on base is better for the offense. But once the at-bat is over, everything's reset and the pitcher and batter face each other on even ground; once an inning is over, everything switches and the previous inning may as well not have happened. There's nothing about baseball that gives the losing team an advantage, but still no lead is insurmountable.

 

In digital and tabletop games, a lot of this can be accomplished with randomness. If you're rolling an unmodified die, the odds don't care about whose winning or losing. Of course, there's sweet spot you want to hit, but I think it's important not to ignore the role randomness can play in ensuring that players stay engaged in a game. If I know I'm only a few good rolls away from being back in the thick of it, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure those rolls go my way. And even without randomness, a designer who wanted to reduce the need for a comeback mechanic could make sure that the game was more about performing many discreet actions well than it was about performing a series of actions that link together to have a bigger effect.

 

Another way to reduce the need for comeback mechanics, or to remove the sting of comebacks that feel unsatisfying, is to concentrate more on the value of "playing to play" rather than "playing to win." I think far too many strategy games and players in both the digital and tabletop spaces have tunnel vision about victory and it seriously limits design possibilities. If one of the goals of comeback mechanics is to ensure that a players remain engaged even if they are winning, maybe the answer is instead to remove winning as the sole reason to remain engaged. There's no need for a comeback if winning is secondary to the enjoyment of each particular moment of play. Zacny touched a bit on this when he talked about the successes of Paradox Games. Conversely, when the two Robs were talking about their War of the Ring came, they said it was unsatisfying because it meant that the previous two hours were meaningless. Presumably, this is because it meant that the decisions made in those hours didn't significantly contribute to who won. But why should the meaning of a decision in a game be entirely linked to it's effect on victory? Why can't those moments be meaningful on their own? Legacy games do a really good job of bypassing this, I think. When I play Risk Legacy, I'm trying to win the game, sure. But if I don't win or if I feel that whoever won did so because of happenstance, that doesn't make it feel hollow. There are other things to get excited about in that game: what packets were opened up, which territories were changed, who staged an impossible defense, who unexpectedly broke an alliance, what the next game is going to look like. "Who won and did they deserve it?" is a far less interesting question than any of those.

 

I have more thoughts, but that's probably enough for now.

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 XCOM is a nice example and counter-example. It has some safety valves for "comeback". E.g. upgrades that make your soldiers better at being in coma. You also can often retreat to attack later. But then you look at the community and strategy guides. All of those things are frowned upon. You have to go up. You should not lose a soldier or a mission and you should not spend resources on preparing for it. So you do the opposite of what you'd do in real life. SP games may provide comeback mechanics but devs know that most players play without Iron Man and would just reload if there's a small fall on their way up.

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Interesting discussion throughout.

 

Though mostly unrelated to the topic, you guys absolutely nailed why I'm not really big on Power Grid. It feels like optimal play requires keeping a mental spreadsheet of everyone's current money level and board state, updating it every turn while everyone waits on you.

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I like the idea of either obfuscating the progress to victory (either through RNG or complexity of system or whatever) method that was mentioned in this episode or the one that I think Soren mentioned while back, which is to better identify the moment when outcome is determined and end it there or PDX/minecraft/simulation method of removing victory condition and just letting the player do whatever.

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Great show!

I do wonder how the lack of comeback reinforce the mindset of "I am going to lose anyway and there is nothing I could do about" that often lead to rage quit of people avoinding playing (we kind see this when people talk about RTS, because there you often can spot the "I wish I could play, but I would lose anyway...", in fact even more in cases of RTs where people might play in "suboptimal way" but still a "fun" for them way, only to be crushed (in both ways).

 

During the show you guys mention that a shorter time could be used when comeback mechanics aren´t avaliable, and I was reminded of something:

Long time ago, when I played WoW (this was if I do remember right, before Wrath of the Lich King), I often had very bad or annoying matchs in the battleground (pvp), back there the match last around 30 minutes, the problem is that you often you know from the very start if your side was doomed, as long the other side had some twink character (character with much better gear that their current level. In my case, since I was playing with the Horde, I was often plagued by the vision of twink gnome rougues with two dagger, sometimes several of them) - which mean that you can only hope you side lose fast, however what happened most is that your side was too skilled to lose fast but to unskilled to win... and the whole thing last those 30 minutes while your team just whine and point fingers.... because of this (and the fact that during that period, I didn´t have much time to play) I started to avoid battlegrounds.

Now, on the Warhammer MMO, the time of the kind battle was much shorter (15 minutes) and due the way leveling work, there wasn´t (at least during the time I played) much twinks around. The result was that the battle where fast enought that even if you lose, wasn´t such big deal, so you even feel like trying again.

 

Another thing I remembered: Heroes of Might and Magic often suffer from the lack of comeback, due how heavily it relies on numbers, once one side got a advantage, there isn´t much you could do unless you can out produce him in number of units which is unlikely, so you can play a long map only to have to give it up, if the oponent have superior numbers.

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I was listening to this episode while playing http://js13kgames.com/games/compact-conflict/index.html and it particularly resonated; it's a 12 turn quick play Risk-alike on a randomly generated map. The nature of the game makes it fairly obvious when a bad roll of the dice or a bad decision has doomed you to some suboptimal end in the game; a two-way tie for second place where you wind up stalemated with another player while a third conquers the board, usually. As a result, I find a significant percentage of my plays wind up with me resigning at the end of turn 1 or 2.

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Hmm. An interesting topic. I found it a little frustrating that there was so little talk of a player using skill to get back in the game. I know i always mention Go, but hey, it's a good example. With games at a "average" amateur level, big swings happen fairly often, as it's easy to misread a situation, and it only takes a one wrong move for a group of stones to die, or an invasion to end up successful. There's no support for this hard coded into the game mechanics. It's just that the game is sufficiently deep to allow these things to happen. Also, the type of skill required for the opening, mid-game and endgame are quite different, so even at professional level, it is possible to see players coming back from behind.

 

Another weird thing was the lack of discussion of enjoying the game for the sake of playing and learning. When I play a stronger opponent at go, I know that I am very unlikely to win. Instead, I try to play well and make him/her have to think a little. If I can give my stronger opponent an interesting game, then I count that a success. And I'll likely learn something (as losing to stronger opponents is a great way to improve ones own game, in many different games and sports). I am comfortable enough with my own skill level that I don't need the illusion of some comeback mechanic.

 

There also wasn't a discussion of how often these miraculous comebacks should happen? If the long-odds victory happens a little too often, then the odds can't have been that long!

 

Also, there's nothing wrong with admitting defeat and  retiring from a single player or two player game once you have played out all the likely interesting options.

 

Obviously, things change somewhat with social multiplayer games.

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Another weird thing was the lack of discussion of enjoying the game for the sake of playing and learning. When I play a stronger opponent at go, I know that I am very unlikely to win. Instead, I try to play well and make him/her have to think a little. If I can give my stronger opponent an interesting game, then I count that a success. And I'll likely learn something (as losing to stronger opponents is a great way to improve ones own game, in many different games and sports). I am comfortable enough with my own skill level that I don't need the illusion of some comeback mechanic.

 

They probably didn't discuss it because with all participants having that mindset comebacks become a non-issue.

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Really enjoyed this episode, felt like one of the best for a while.

The thing I felt probably wasn't really covered in the conversation though was 'when are comeback mechanics necessary'. In the end, there aren't really that many single player video games where you need them. In fact there aren't really any to be honest, I suppose the comeback mechanic is 'learn to play the game better' - the Dark Souls series builds its entire game mechanic around that concept.

With regard to Strategy games though, I think the same principle stands? I suppose what you are trying to counter is frustration. Very often in strategy games - especially grand strategy games - you might well have invested many many hours into a particular game before you realised you've made a hash of things and are going to lose. Be it a specific victory condition in Civ (something I suffered from a lot in Civ IV but Civ V signposts before you start - 'pick this civ for these victories!') but really other than making the player feel like they haven't wasted that time - what are they for? The XCOM mod The Long War is a case in point here. I think I've invested over 40 hours in a playthrough before now before realising the bad month I had a couple of hours into the game meant that the aliens totally outstripped me for research and resources that I was completely buggered. Took another 30 hours of play to realise it though. But that's OK. Sort of. The mod makes no bones about that and makes it clear the conditions under which you are playing the game. I can't really think of another condition in strategy gaming (video) where you'd need a comeback mechanic other than making it feel to the player that they haven't been wasting their time. Which I think in most cases would just devalue the game.

I understand it in social games even if it can be incredibly frustrating (Mario Kart is the example I would pick. The blue shell explosive is horrendous and renders skill in the game almost irrelevant. It homes in on the leader, is nigh on impossible to avoid and just means that if the person firing it is so far back they are just spiteing the leader and preventing them from winning, and if it is a game between players of the same moderate skill level just renders the winner down to pot luck) where keeping people engaged is probably more important.

If someone is winning a game it's probably because they are the best player. The best comeback mechanics are surely those that give those losing a bit of a boost but do nothing to penalise the person in the lead.

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hey Sorb, we agree! That doesn't always happen :)

 

I'm going to put this out there... I'm not sure I agree with it entirely, but..... if a game requires an explicit comeback mechanic in order for the players who aren't winning to enjoy themselves, then it probably isn't a good game.

 

I like the Dominions and Street Fighter examples that have been given. Both work pretty well. And at the other end of the spectrum, Paradox games are in some ways superior to Civ as they games are often still fun to play even when you're not winning!

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I'm going to put this out there... I'm not sure I agree with it entirely, but..... if a game requires an explicit comeback mechanic in order for the players who aren't winning to enjoy themselves, then it probably isn't a good game.

 

Are there any games that require an explicit comeback mechanic like that?

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Are there any games that require an explicit comeback mechanic like that?

Probably only ones designed to be played by adults and children at the same time?

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Probably only ones designed to be played by adults and children at the same time?

 

Oh gosh, this brings back memories of being assaulted in the arcades in my youth.

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Are there any games that require an explicit comeback mechanic like that?

 

A few eurogames in which the player out in the lead is penalised at every turn.

 

 

Oh, another game that deserves mention is Solium Infernium.  I haven't played it in ages, but I remember power being very hard to hold on to, and there were a lot of ways of getting back in to the game. It was very difficult to protect all your weaknesses, even if you were ahead, so there were plenty of opportunities for weaker players to mess with you. [These weren't really comeback mechanics though, as the winning player could use the same tools to win more, depending on character build etc. Just different routes to victory interacting with one another]

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I like the point Dave Heron brought up about the "comeback mechanic" in Street Fighter. I noticed the same balancing act in the spinoff game Puzzle Fighter where right when a player is about to be eliminated from a match is also when they have the potential to push back with the most punishing blow. I even came up with a phrase for this, I call it the pendulum of power. The idea is that as the path to victory becomes shorter the power that players are able to exert against each other becomes greater. This makes the whole competition exciting because neither player is truly out of the match until the victory condition has been met, but this state exists without reducing the skill involved in the game.

I would love to see this method of balancing games introduced into a lot more games. However there are two difficulties with introducing it into the strategy space.

1. This doesn't always gel well with games that are set within a specific historical period. Depending on the circumstances, the pendulum swing could be wildly inappropriate for the events the designer is attempting to depict.

2. It's unclear how the pendulum of power should be implemented in a game where there are more than two competing forces. It's obvious how this works in a game with two players, but what does such a system look like when there are 3 to 6 (or more) players?

Anyway this is a great topic, and I think designers need to think about this carefully if they want to make a game that is exciting to watch/play, and that respects the players' time.

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