[Article] Hardcore Game Design and Subsystems

Scottie, I think you gave us an outstanding analysis in your original post. The most important thing I think you touched on, though maybe not directly, was the value of player failure. In a way, I think you can judge how "hardcore" a game is by how punitively that game deals with player error and failure to succeed. Obviously, "hardcore mode" in ARPGs means that your character is dead forever upon dying, which would be considered the ultimate punitive measure. Many other games have softer forms of punishment upon failing. However, there has been a greater and greater push for games to be less punitive as the industry has progressed. Sadly, most gamers simply don't understand why anyone would ever subject themselves to these kinds of rules. In modern Action RPGs, the punishment for dying is a 10 second jaunt back to your body. In MMORPGs, it might be some trivial quantity of currency. In first person shooters, in many cases, you never actually lose any progress at all.

At the vanguard of all of these changes to the industry is a simple line of reasoning: "Why have any form of punishment for player failure at all if failure is unpleasant? Why not remove the prospect of failure entirely?"

But this narrow line of reasoning fundamentally misses the point of punishing players for failure. Nobody enjoys the process of being punished by a game. When I play a game in hardcore mode, I'm not glad to see my character die and I don't enjoy losing my progress. But knowing that my character can die makes every other achievement in the game much more significant. It's a lot like watching sports. Sure, I want my favorite team to win as much as possible, but if I knew the game were rigged so that they would always win, then watching would no longer be fun. In Diablo 3, I played through the entire game on softcore and was bored stiff. It felt like nothing I did really mattered. Sure, I could powergame and try to get gear that afforded my character greater damage or protection, but why did it matter if that protection was made irrelevant by no death penalties? If I could sprint back in 5 seconds to the place I died and resume as though nothing had happened?

But when I played Diablo 3 hardcore, it gave the game a tremendous breath of new life because every piece of gear that gave me an edge suddenly mattered. Efficiency mattered, Concentration mattered. Every click I made had consequence and meaning. Something was at stake.

So as I mentioned before, I think what determines a game is hardcore is the degree to which games punish players for incompetence or failure. And its these types of games I enjoy most. After all, with no prospect of failure, victory is trivial.

One of the best threads I've seen in months.

Amen.

Excellent post, restrictions are good.

The one thing that bugs me about POE and other game design in general is the RNG worship that goes on. I'm not so sure if it's best that game progression is dictated by purely random forces like map drop rates. It's kind of like trying to figure out how to turn on the lamp and the secret is that you were doing it right, you're just an unlucky POS. It's much less satisfying than there being an actual trick and seems like a cop-out to artificially create difficulty. Also leads to learned helplessness.

This game is totally kicking my ass.
That is totally why I love it.

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deepseaboat wrote:

Excellent post, restrictions are good.

The one thing that bugs me about POE and other game design in general is the RNG worship that goes on. I'm not so sure if it's best that game progression is dictated by purely random forces like map drop rates. It's kind of like trying to figure out how to turn on the lamp and the secret is that you were doing it right, you're just an unlucky POS. It's much less satisfying than there being an actual trick and seems like a cop-out to artificially create difficulty. Also leads to learned helplessness.

I'm not sure I agree. Yes drops are random- but ultimately if there's one thing to learn from any study of statistics & probability, it's that any random variable will just about always converge to the average with a large number of trials.


This means that if you put in a large amount of time, your experience should be pretty comparable to most players.

The existence of a few high value Outliers such as Kaoms or any 6L high item level item may mean certain players may get very luck and get to skip a huge step ahead in game progression, but everyone else over the long term should progress their wealth at pretty comparable speed provided they are equally skill and committed tot he game- well that should be true for their base income at the least for just playing/farming the game- heavy trading is another source of income entirely.

The people is, people vastly overestimate just how "luck-based" a large series of trials of a random variable is. They feel this way because it feels like mere luck when they have a dry spell or get multiple valuable drops in quick succession- but over the long term, their total value of drops will tend sharply towards the average.



Of course the reliability of wealth over the long term is not the same as getting the items you need directly- but honestly I think that's a good thing. It forces people to actually have to trade and interact with other players to really deck out their guy and progress faster- I'm not necessarily talking about spending more time trading then killing stuff- I merely refer to the necessity of selling off your drops and using that currency to grab what you really need.

The game being hardcore in my mind also means it shouldn't just be a consistent pace gear-escalator(we get too much of that in MMOs already). There should be periods of stagnation and quick advancement(the former ideally requiring people to try to formulate a work-around to their problem)- and most importantly the system should allow for players willing to go the extra mile, be it by spending a great deal of time trading, spending hours back farming, or finding a reliable group that works well togetrher, to advance substantially faster then those who just keep going about their business waiting for drops to coincide with their usual player patterns. The current system accomplishes this ideal in my opinion.

I don't follow MaRo, but I love MTG, and I really appreciate and respect him. I remember being very proud when my friend came to me saying MaRo had just posted a deck almost identical to a list I had made and showed that friend a couple weeks prior.

Necrobump. Because it is nice to reminisce sometimes.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Wake me up for POE2 beta.

looks like that's not nessessary.

lots of interesting opinions here... but I've found a way to shorten it ^^
IMHO

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Jojas wrote:

the fun went out of gaming when

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Jojas wrote:

the money is (became) everything