Blades Runner
Posts: 578
Joined: Thursday, 12th January 2012, 21:03
Tedium and the Illusion of Lethality
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How False Lethality Encourages Tedious Play:
The crux of the issue is that almost every threat is all or nothing -- you die or you don't.
Most monsters ultimately just threaten HP loss, and HP can be fully recovered at an peaceful moment with no significant cost.
Thus, the only bad thing most monsters can do is kill you outright, anything less and you can "5" it all better at any calm moment.
Because of this, given decent play, fights tend to fall into one of three categories:
1. No significant chance of death. These fights just take up some time and give minor XP. Look up "grinding" in the manual's philosophy section.
2. No significant chance of death if consumables are used. These at least force actual decisions/tradeoffs -- either run or use up your stuff.
3. Significant chance of death even with consumables. These are the only truly threatening fights in the game.
Note that type 3 fights only really exist in the very early game.
A good player from Temple on can always avoid these fights, making them effectively type 1 (walk away) or type 2 (burn a ?blinking).
Doing this isn't much of an intellectual challenge either -- I suspect the vast majority of post-Temple deaths from sub-excellent players are just from boredom and lack of mental stamina. This seems like a serious problem. Playing the game isn't about making really good decisions -- it's about making half-decent decisions in an almost inhumanly consistent manner. Worse, since there's no real risk involved (with highly consistent proper play), a lot of that playtime is going to feel unexciting and extremely mechanical. Note that it's often the really good players who say the game is too long -- this is probably why.
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How Attrition Creates Player Interest:
Unfortunately, we can't solve this boredom by introducing more type 3 fights mid-to-late game, because encountering near-unavoidable chances of permadeath after a few hours of play would be unfair, even downright cruel. Worse, the length of the game means that even small chances of death throughout would make winning near-impossible, or at least excessively luck-based.
So, design-wise, we must fully admit that the vast majority of fights in a game the length of DCSS *should not* carry significant risk of death.
Currently, DCSS rides the fence on this issue and gets the worst of both worlds. The game has lots of fights that (with proper play) carry no real risk at all, but disproportionately punish brief moments of stupidity. As I've already said, it primarily becomes a game of mental stamina and resistance to boredom.
So, most fights in DCSS need to hit the obsolete features list:
Fights of type 1, which basically only serve to mentally wear down players until they don't notice that the next orc pack has a warlord in it.
Fights of type 3, which are too scary to use (outside of *maybe* Zot:5 and the like), and are really rare already.
Some fights, however, have some design potential. These are the fights that cause non-lethal but long-term damage:
Fights of type 2 are actually interesting, because they don't truly threaten death, but do cause damage of a sort by using up player resources. Unfortunately, they're a band-aid over a gunshot wound at this point.
Monsters that cause gimmicky longer-term effects like draining, rot, statrot, and item destruction would have the same effect as type 2 fights, except that their effects often don't matter, are implemented in an annoying way, or are, as with type 2 fights. a band-aid over a gunshot wound.
Whatever the problems with DCSS's particular implementations of it, the idea behind these non-lethal sorts of damage is sound -- it's something legitimately threatening that doesn't actually kill you. This offers a workaround to the problems inherent in having countless fights each with a tiny chance of killing players unless handled perfectly. Instead, when used well, these attrition-based fights cause minor damage if handled well, moderate damage when handled poorly, and almost never kill, *even if handled poorly*.
I use the word "attrition" very broadly here -- basically anything that hurts you in a nontrivial way without killing you.
Attrition-based fights can be consistently exciting by posing legitimate risk, without constantly threatening death in a way that a long permadeath-based game can't support.
Currently, players get away with poor play for a long while until they suddenly die at random. Good play is about constantly mitigating that .05% risk of death.
In a more attrition-based game, poor play would cause small but consistent losses in a clear and meaningful way, and good play would be about getting through most fights with minimal losses.
Currently, death comes from a random javelin toss when you stand in the wrong tile a turn too long. Even though it's probably your fault, this often seems arbitrary and unfair.
In an attrition-based game, death would come after a series of poor choices gradually weaken you. Losing happens in a more exciting and meaningful way, and the consequences of decisions are clearer.
Currently, taking a risk is almost always a bad decision, regardless of the reward, because "risk" means "risk of death" and you don't need the reward to win. This encourages players to avoid exciting situations and makes optimal decisions more simplistic.
In an attrition-based game, "risk" means "risk of resource loss". Risk/Reward situations create more meaningful player decisions with fewer clear best options. It will no longer be optimal for players avoid all danger always, resulting in more exciting gameplay.
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Caveats:
It's important to emphasize that I don't advocate just taking DCSS as it is and piling on lots of corrosion, statrot, and malmutation.
As long as most fights are designed to potentially kill you outright but be entirely harmless provided you handle them optimally, most attrition mechanics will tend towards the gimmicky, annoying feel we all know and love. This is a very deeply embedded problem, and would probably need a major overhaul to remove or some very clever mechanics tweaks to partially mitigate.
Now, if HP/MP healed with XP gain instead of through mashing "5", and the dungeon was rebalanced around that mechanic, we might be talking.
I know it won't happen and that's fine, but the core problem is there, and it may be an important thing to design around in the future.