Permadeath

[Joewintergreen]

I played through Metal Slug 1 and 2 on PC, and on the PC version you just press a button to put in another "coin". It kind of ruins the game. Even though I love Metal Slug.

[thestalkinghead]

I think that's just absolutely wrong. I don't think any permadeath game would be better without permadeath. It would be intolerably worse, in my opinion. Roguelikes are not meant to be finished. They re indeed played similarly to pinball. How far can you go? How long can you hold out? Every playthrough is different. Give players the option to skip the permadeath and you muddy the value it has for the players that spend time getting better at the game. Pinball would be meaningless if the next player could just flick a switch and have infinite balls.

And the reverse is true as well, like you've pointed out. Games without permadeath would almost always be worse with permadeath. Half-life, a game meant to be finished, would be no fun with permadeath.

Thank god both types of games exist so both you and I can enjoy video games the way we want to.

 

i mean if permadeath was removed at design stage, not removing permadeath from a finished game, so like with FTL you could have a more complex story with side quests, you could have multiple bosses and more hard battles and the game could be longer, the permadeath aspect of FTL and other games is sort of a cheap way of hiding how simple the game is and as i said most roguelikes just feel like prototype versions of an rpg.

 

i bought FTL and i felt like it was worth the money so I'm not saying the game sucks because of permadeath and obviously the scope of the game would never be as big as something like the X games or freelancer because it is an indie game, however i do think permafail holds back what you could possibly design a game to be

[Gormongous]

i mean if permadeath was removed at design stage, not removing permadeath from a finished game, so like with FTL you could have a more complex story with side quests, you could have multiple bosses and more hard battles and the game could be longer, the permadeath aspect of FTL and other games is sort of a cheap way of hiding how simple the game is and as i said most roguelikes just feel like prototype versions of an rpg.

 

i bought FTL and i felt like it was worth the money so I'm not saying the game sucks because of permadeath and obviously the scope of the game would never be as big as something like the X games or freelancer because it is an indie game, however i do think permafail holds back what you could possibly design a game to be

 

I feel like your arguments throughout this thread have been a bit black and white. The one you've been making for the past page or so could be applied just as easily to difficulty. Challenge in video games, especially challenge that leads even to temporary setbacks or failure, hold backs the scope of a game's design by making success dependent on the player. Better to eliminate all challenge to allow for a greater range of players to experience a fuller, more forgiving game, right?

 

I vehemently disagree. While I don't like most "ironman" or "permadeath" design choices, it would be ridiculous to say that they're a mistake in every design, if only because that assumes, like your arguments seem to do, that the end goal of a game is to complete it, which I would argue holds back the scope of a game's design even more.

[thestalkinghead]

I feel like your arguments throughout this thread have been a bit black and white. The one you've been making for the past page or so could be applied just as easily to difficulty. Challenge in video games, especially challenge that leads even to temporary setbacks or failure, hold backs the scope of a game's design by making success dependent on the player. Better to eliminate all challenge to allow for a greater range of players to experience a fuller, more forgiving game, right?

 

I vehemently disagree. While I don't like most "ironman" or "permadeath" design choices, it would be ridiculous to say that they're a mistake in every design, if only because that assumes, like your arguments seem to do, that the end goal of a game is to complete it, which I would argue holds back the scope of a game's design even more.

don't misinterpret me not liking permafail for not liking a challenge, i believe you can have more challenge with a game with a loading function than a game without, you could say that loading makes a game easy, but you still have to actually do whatever mission/level you are doing you can't load the next mission/level so it is as easy/hard to as it is designed to be, but nobody will design a mission/level in a game with permafail that you have an extremely slim chance of succeeding at because only like 1% of gamers are obsessive enough to replay hours of a game to accomplish one thing, hardly anybody would have the patience to to play most games if there wasn't a load function.

 

I'm not a completionist, so no i have not been arguing that the end goal of a game is to complete it, the end goal of a game it to enjoy it.

 

and i didn't say permafail is a mistake in every game design i said "permafail holds back what you could possibly design a game to be", just think about 90% of every game you have ever played, if there had not been the possibility to load in any capacity and you had to start the game over from the beginning every time you died would you be willing to play the game and if so what would change about how you play it, i think most people wouldn't enjoy playing video games at all and the ones that do would probably not do most of the things in the game because the risk/reward would be so bad that it wouldn't be worth it.

 

i would really be interested in how you think loading holds back the scope of a games design at all let alone more than permafail

[BigJKO]

I strongly disagree. What FTL does might not be your cup of tea but it obviously is to a lot of people. Remove permadeath at any point in design and you've removed a big part of what makes it great for that group of people. The tension, which leads to unexpected player reaction, the connection to those specific NPCs, that you'll never see again. This is a vital part of it for the people who enjoy this particular type of game.

Also, that doesn't limit the game from including more storylines, sidequests and bosses. With or without permadeath the developers would need equal amounts of resources to implement those. Permadeath is a solution to a developer that is already limited due to resources. Like you say it nicely masks the limits of the game. But the limits aren't a result of permadeath as design. If FTL devs had had endless resources they would've added whatever they wanted into the game, I imagine.

They'd probably still stick with permadeath because as has been said a lot of times already, it triggers very strong emotions and reactions and makes players behave in ways they never would've otherwise. It's just one way to design a video game and it hasn't even been particularly overused yet.

You don't enjoy it, that's absolutely fine. But that doesn't mean you're right that it limits the design choices a developer can make.

[thestalkinghead]

i like FTL

 

permadeath didn't limit FTL it was well done and made within a small scope, but permafail would limit any game that tries to be bigger than FTL, if FTL had unlimited resources they would have added whatever they wanted to the game but the bigger and more complex the game got the more apparent the limits of permadeath would be.

 

ultimately i guess i mean it limits the amount of people that would enjoy it because obviously you could spend millions and make a 400 hour long campaign and fill it with millions of weapons/items and have multiple stories and side quests and still have permadeath in it, but like 1 person is going to complete it and only a few people will enjoy it, I'm not saying every game should be mass market but the market of one is stupid.

 

also it would limit what players would do in a game, games have there own kind of magic like hollywood magic in hollywood films the bad guys always miss the protagonist (except a flesh wound to the arm etc.) in computer games there is health and loading but without that magic it loses its fun, i could play a lot of games and just restart the game if i die but that would cause me to play the game totally differently because the priority would always be to stay alive not the objective set by the game, i would play a game in the most gamey way possible and basically break the games illusion and just spend my time manipulating the AI and exploiting mechanics in the game because i could, the safety of loading allows me to be awesome, i can decide to just try out running into the middle of the room and one shot headshoting everybody in the room and if that doesn't work the first time i can either keep trying until i get it perfect or just try another less awesome approach, but if i couldn't load i would find an angle where the AI can't shoot me but i can shoot them (because AI is stupid) i would always use the most lethal/efficient weapon and i would never take any risk i didn't have to, some people play like that anyway so maybe a permadeath option would be a good thing to put in every game (as long as it wasn't balanced for a permadeath game ie. made easier) but forcing permadeath and designing a game around it limits what you can expect players to do.

[BigJKO]

I don't know what to tell you.

Again, I feel like you're missing the point of permadeath completely. As an option to a game it's absolutely useless. It is either a game made for it or it isn't.

It's like you're arguing for why apples aren't more like oranges? I don't like football games but that doesn't mean I want all football games to be racing games instead.

Whether you like it or not permadeath has a place in certain games and there's obviously a market for it.

[SecretAsianMan]

thestalkinghead, before I respond to your latest comments, let me ask you a question.  When you think back on the time you've spent playing FTL, what do you think about?  If I had never played the game before and asked you to tell me some neat things about it to try and convince me to play, what would you say to me?

[thestalkinghead]

thestalkinghead, before I respond to your latest comments, let me ask you a question.  When you think back on the time you've spent playing FTL, what do you think about?  If I had never played the game before and asked you to tell me some neat things about it to try and convince me to play, what would you say to me?

 

it is a 2d top down game set in space where you control a spaceship that travels through a randomly generated universe with randomly generated events to escape a gigantic unbeatable enemy fleet and warn your allies of it's approach, on your travels you can upgrade your ship, buy new weapons/armour/utilities/crew and your crew (who can be different species that each have different skills/traits) also gains experience by working on specific parts of the ship, you control each crew member individually in real time and also each weapon can target specific parts of enemy ships during battle(shields,weapons oxygen etc.), you also have control of the utilities on your ship and have to designate limited power to different parts of your ship eg. weapons, shields oxygen, surveillance and medibay etc. so for example during battle you may want to power down your medical bay so you have more power for weapons or shields, ships can also be boarded, either the enemy boards your ship or later in the game using upgrades you can board the enemy ship, you can open each door on your ship individually including the airlocks, so if a part of your ship is on fire or has enemies in it you can open the doors to let all the air out and either put out the fire or suffocate the enemies, you can pause time whenever you want so you can tactically think about what to do and issue orders, you can also name your crew and ship, also while playing you may unlock new types of ship that at the start of the game you can choose from.

 

 

(doug died while bravely putting out a fire in the medibay and getting hit by a missile) 

 

 

and yeah i guess i am just arguing for no reason, but it helped me to figure out what more specifically is my problem with permadeath or actually now i have thought about it more permafail, but i still can't figure out what is the problem with having a save/load function as an option (in a permadeath game), it would always improve my experience and not affect people that don't like/use it 

[clyde]

When my wife watches movies on Netflix movies, she fast-forwards through any scenes that don't have the main characters in them. I find myself fighting for the artist's intent, but really, she should have the option. There are a few movies I might actually enjoy if I could toggle a switch that says "fight-scenes - yes/no" and "chase scenes - yes/no". That's not true, there would barely be any movie left.

I'm all for a switch that you can toggle "save-feature on/off" But I could see myself getting passionate about which one is the default setting.

[thestalkinghead]

yeah i wouldn't argue for making permafail games default load/save games, and i would be fine with it being called "baby mode" and have an attached warning when you select it that says " warning: this setting could greatly reduce the tension of the game and is not the intended method of play" or something like that, i wouldn't care i get what i want from the game, and it wouldn't even have to be quick saves it could just be a loadable checkpoint, but at least i wouldn't lose everything by making mistakes

[SecretAsianMan]

My point in asking was to see what kind of story you were going to tell me, if it was going to be more about the game's mechanics or if it would involve a story from a particular crew.  You gave me mostly mechanics but your bit about Doug's fate helps illustrate that sometimes permanent death/failure can create a memorable experience, which for many people is the point.  But you seem to be getting that more now so I won't argue it further.

[thestalkinghead]

yeah while i do appreciate a good story in a game (which is very rare) i am generally interested in mechanics while playing and heavily goal orientated (whether that is my own goal or the games goal) but i would never say that mechanics create a story, i just don't agree with calling emergent gameplay mechanics "story generators" i will set my own rules and play by them but i don't make a story, maybe that is exactly how some people play a game, but for me the story is either part of the game or it isn't a story it's just things that happen, that doug bit was really just a descriptive way of explaining where doug went, he wasn't brave he is AI (that did exactly what i told him to do) and another AI killed him because of the way it was programed, but because i called him doug and he was part of the original crew that AI was more important to me than Emma who was his replacement so i guess i am a bit sentimental about things but it was mainly his lost experience that was the bad part....ramble waffle ramble anyway maybe in conclusion all games should have both "hardcore" mode and "softcore" mode so that people with opposite opinions/views about the subject can get what they want out of a game even if by design they are supposed to be played one way or the other not both

[Twig]

A lot of roguelikes would be greatly HINDERED by a save option.

 

Since they're so random, you never know what you're going to get even on the first floor. If all you do is save and load you'd probably miss out on like 90% of the content. Yuck.

[BigJKO]

In a perfect world where it'd be easy for every developer to add and test and balance separate game modes for what players might want to do, I might agree that just giving everyone the option is a neat idea.

But doing this isn't as trivial as putting a fast-forward button. Some developers like to be able to guarantee a good gameplay experience, and if they'd just throw a reload feature in without thought about how it'd actually play, they might not feel that they're delivering what they set out to do. (There are also a lot of developers that love giving player all the choice they can)

So it comes down to resources, I think. Roguelikes are permadeath only, without other options because devoting resources to making sure that the option to reload would also be a good game, isn't a luxury most of these developers have.

In the end there are a handful of permadeath games and a shitload of games that allow saving/reloading. You already have a choice: playing any of the many games out there.

But I'm happy we were able to help you pinpoint what you don't like about permadeath games!

[SecretAsianMan]

I would say that a story created by mechanics is in some ways a better story than one that was deliberatly created by a person simply because of the fact that it was spontaneous and not designed.  Take any of the numerous Stalker and Far Cry 2 stories told by the podcast crew.  Almost all of them involve the game mechanics and not the game's storyline.  You can say that those situations are "just things that happen" but then most stories are just things that happen and any emotional response is a result of witnessing those things.  There's nothing wrong with being more interested in gameplay mechanics, but to say that they don't create stories seems a bit shortsighted.

[thestalkinghead]

I would say that a story created by mechanics is in some ways a better story than one that was deliberatly created by a person simply because of the fact that it was spontaneous and not designed.  Take any of the numerous Stalker and Far Cry 2 stories told by the podcast crew.  Almost all of them involve the game mechanics and not the game's storyline.  You can say that those situations are "just things that happen" but then most stories are just things that happen and any emotional response is a result of witnessing those things.  There's nothing wrong with being more interested in gameplay mechanics, but to say that they don't create stories seems a bit shortsighted.

i guess i sort of see the world in a more math like way than an english type way (school subjects) eg. i wouldn't say that a raindrop has a story (some would) but there are millions of physics "mechanics" that get it where it is but for me they are just things that happen in the same way that a tiger AI randomly killing a guard AI in a game because of it's programmed mechanics is just things that happen (admittedly cool things that happen) the mission i was on at the time was the story, but as i said i enjoy mechanics and i think things like that happening in a game definitely makes the game better but for me there is a separation between random/chaos theory type things and things that are intentionally scripted, but these things are sort of fundamental worldview things, like i wouldn't call a picture created by a random noise generator art, even if it looked good, but some people would, and i guess a lot of the time this just comes down to our own definition of things and the struggle to translate thought into words, so nobody i right or wrong they are just different perspectives and viewpoints.

 

In a perfect world where it'd be easy for every developer to add and test and balance separate game modes for what players might want to do, I might agree that just giving everyone the option is a neat idea.

But doing this isn't as trivial as putting a fast-forward button. Some developers like to be able to guarantee a good gameplay experience, and if they'd just throw a reload feature in without thought about how it'd actually play, they might not feel that they're delivering what they set out to do. (There are also a lot of developers that love giving player all the choice they can)

So it comes down to resources, I think. Roguelikes are permadeath only, without other options because devoting resources to making sure that the option to reload would also be a good game, isn't a luxury most of these developers have.

In the end there are a handful of permadeath games and a shitload of games that allow saving/reloading. You already have a choice: playing any of the many games out there.

But I'm happy we were able to help you pinpoint what you don't like about permadeath games!

 yeah i can see problems in adding modes that aren't properly balanced and obviously people want to deliver a quality product so i could understand that most people couldn't just add a function and not try and make that function coherently work in the product so it would basically always add more work than just simply making a load function, but most games that have optional hardcore modes don't change much in the game apart from the ability to load/respawn so even if there is a worry that a load function would make the game too easy, it would be the players choice and i think that would usually be enough to satisfy the people that choose that option

[SecretAsianMan]

i guess i sort of see the world in a more math like way than an english type way (school subjects) eg. i wouldn't say that a raindrop has a story (some would) but there are millions of physics "mechanics" that get it where it is but for me they are just things that happen in the same way that a tiger AI randomly killing a guard AI in a game because of it's programmed mechanics is just things that happen (admittedly cool things that happen) the mission i was on at the time was the story, but as i said i enjoy mechanics and i think things like that happening in a game definitely makes the game better but for me there is a separation between random/chaos theory type things and things that are intentionally scripted, but these things are sort of fundamental worldview things, like i wouldn't call a picture created by a random noise generator art, even if it looked good, but some people would, and i guess a lot of the time this just comes down to our own definition of things and the struggle to translate thought into words, so nobody i right or wrong they are just different perspectives and viewpoints.

 

That's fair enough.  I would be one of those people who says the raindrop has a story.  I wouldn't say it was a good one, but it's still a story.  To me, there isn't a lot of difference between a story that happens because a person determined it would happen that way and a story that happens because an electronic brain determined it would happen that way.  Maybe one is better than the other but they're still stories to me.  And for what its worth, I also tend to view the world from a math/physics standpoint (I'm an engineer), but I also appreciate the creative view.

[mikemariano]

I defeated Mom's Heart in The Binding of Isaac earlier this week.  It was my third time beating the game.  But it was a meaningless victory.

 

That's because I've only ever beat the game while playing as Isaac and while picking up the quad shot.

 

So in my mind, I've never really beat the game.  I haven't developed any skills while playing.  The game just gives me its version of an instant win button whenever it feels like.

 

This has more to do with the game's randomization rather than its permadeath, but it seems to me to be part of the same logic: "Anyone who can't handle permadeath is a baby.  And even if you do win, you're still a baby because we let you win."

[Twig]

I've beaten Binding of Isaac without picking up any power ups. X: