Game Fundamentals - The Illusion of Accomplishment

[SKyOdin]

Celebrim, I would response to your response to my last post, but I hate line-by-line quoting, since that causes the important details to quickly be lost amidst quibbling over minutia. Overall though, I don't think you really said anything of substance in response to my comments.

As it stands, you have yet to prove in any way that "ego gamers" you are talking about even exist, or that there is any trend in game design that is designed to appease them. Until you produce an example of a game that caters to these players, there really isn't anything meaningful to talk about in this thread.

However, I get the general impression that you are talking about 4E and its general design decision that the majority of attacks and skill checks performed by players should succeed. If that is the case, then that is a terrible example for your argument.

Success in a game like D&D is not based on round by round results; success comes at the end of the encounter if the party is still alive and the enemy party is defeated. A single die roll isn't sufficient to give a feeling of accomplishment on its own. All the die roll can do is contribute to a general sense of dread or excitement.

Furthermore, even if a game system was designed such that every attack a character made hit 100% of the time, that doesn't mean that the game is easy or built for instant gratification. Take the videogame Final Fantasy IV for example. Just about every physical attack your characters make will hit for consistent damage, and magic is guaranteed to work. However, Final Fantasy IV is a notoriously hard game (especially in its DS remake). The player's party can easily have two characters die in a battle against mooks, and boss fights can be frustrating experiences that involve numerous retries. Just landing a hit in combat won't evoke Fiero, particularly in prolonged fights where one hit's success isn't significant.

If you want to make the case that game design is leading towards instant gratification and easy success, you need to prove that there is a game system where it is consistently the case that the players will always easily win every fight, regardless of variables. I don't think that is the case for 4E D&D or any other modern RPG.

 

[ggroy]

Celebrim, I would response to your response to my last post, but I hate line-by-line quoting, since that causes the important details to quickly be lost amidst quibbling over minutia. Overall though, I don't think you really said anything of substance in response to my comments.

As it stands, you have yet to prove in any way that "ego gamers" you are talking about even exist, or that there is any trend in game design that is designed to appease them. Until you produce an example of a game that caters to these players, there really isn't anything meaningful to talk about in this thread.

However, I get the general impression that you are talking about 4E and its general design decision that the majority of attacks and skill checks performed by players should succeed. If that is the case, then that is a terrible example for your argument.

Success in a game like D&D is not based on round by round results; success comes at the end of the encounter if the party is still alive and the enemy party is defeated. A single die roll isn't sufficient to give a feeling of accomplishment on its own. All the die roll can do is contribute to a general sense of dread or excitement.

Furthermore, even if a game system was designed such that every attack a character made hit 100% of the time, that doesn't mean that the game is easy or built for instant gratification. Take the videogame Final Fantasy IV for example. Just about every physical attack your characters make will hit for consistent damage, and magic is guaranteed to work. However, Final Fantasy IV is a notoriously hard game (especially in its DS remake). The player's party can easily have two characters die in a battle against mooks, and boss fights can be frustrating experiences that involve numerous retries. Just landing a hit in combat won't evoke Fiero, particularly in prolonged fights where one hit's success isn't significant.

If you want to make the case that game design is leading towards instant gratification and easy success, you need to prove that there is a game system where it is consistently the case that the players will always easily win every fight, regardless of variables. I don't think that is the case for 4E D&D or any other modern RPG.

There's one obvious example of an "ego-gamer", but in the video game area: the person who ALWAYS plays in "god mode" in a computer or console game.

 

[SKyOdin]

There's one obvious example of an "ego-gamer", but in the video game area: the person who ALWAYS plays in "god mode" in a computer or console game.

I actually don't agree. The reasons why someone might play in god-mode can be compleicated and varied.

When someone is playing a game with a god-mode cheat, they aren't playing the game in order to experience Fiero. If the game doesn't provide a challenge, it can't create any sense of accomplishment. However, the pride of accomplishment is only one of several reasons for playing a game. Typically someone who is using a god-mode cheat is doing so in order to get a different kind of experience out of the game.

Here I will admit to liberally using the "power overwhelming" cheat in Starcraft and its equivalent in Warcraft II. Yes, I did play through most of Starcraft using a godmode cheat. I did so because I wasn't very good at it, and I still wanted to experience the story. I didn't get much of a sense of accomplishment for doing so, but that is irrelevant to why I did it. On the other hand, I did get a great sense of accomplishment for beating Warcraft III without resorting to cheats.

There are other reasons for using cheats as well: I have seen people mess around with godmode cheats in games like Grand Theft Auto simply to play around with how ridiculous the game behaves with them active, often with friends around to watch it with. This is more of simple social activity, far removed from any sense of accomplishment.

This whole line of though does bring something to mind though: people shouldn't make assumptions about the motivations of others, especially in cases where they don't understand the behavior. What some people might call an "ego-gamer" might have very different motivations and desires than what is ascribed to them. Celebrim, did you actually ask these "ego-gamers" you hated so much why they were playing the way they did?

 

[ggroy]

If Celebrim's definition of "ego-gamer" is what I think it is, then I'm willing to admit that I was an "ego-gamer" when it came to certain arcade video games back in the day.

There was one shoot-em-up game I use to play a lot back in the day, which had a bug in the game's programming. This particular bug could be exploited such that all the enemy space aliens in the game would stop firing altogether for an entire game. Without the cheat, I was only able to play through about a dozen or two waves until all my men were killed. Exploiting the cheat, I was able to play for over a hundred or so waves and rolling over the points, until game over. Each wave was more or less identical in a repetitive manner after about level 20 or so.

My motivation back then, was largely to score the highest number of points as possible and rolling the points over several times.

 

[innerdude]

Celebrim, I think I understand fundamentally what you are saying. I think some people are missing the "forest for the trees" in trying to pin down the minute definition of "useful" vs. "not useful" actions. The real point Celebrim is making is that a certain type of game system can, due to its design, inherently reward more "immediate gratification of achievement" types of players than not.

Here's an example--

I am a massively committed PC Gamer. I can't count the number of PC game titles I've purchased and played over the years. I'm also a massive RPG player, both on the PC and pen and paper. Yet in all my years of gaming, I never, ever once played any of the Diablo PC games. It just never appealed to me, based on what everyone said it was--"You adventure....and kill stuff....and level up....and you do it some more!"

Yet a few weeks ago, I picked up the game Torchlight on Steam for a mere 5 bucks, because it had gotten generally positive reviews, and a bunch of my friends played it. Well, as far as I can tell, if Torchlight is fundamentally the same as Diablo (and by all accounts it is), then I do understand why Diablo I and II remained popular for so long. Diablo/Torchlight are classic cases of "achievement reinforcing gratification." Yes, there is some "strategy" involved in building your character, and utilizing the attributes/skills/powers/traps/magic in the most effective ways based on the encounter and terrain. But the real "reward" of playing Torchlight is the ongoing sense of "achievement leveling." I'm waiting for the next big weapon, the next big armor piece, the next gold stash so I can "enchant" my weapon to be more powerful, etc. Yeah, there's supposedly a plot thrown in about some evil underneath the mines, but it's really just an excuse to throw a bunch of bad guys in front of you constantly--and reward the player for successfully conquering them.

Now, is Torchlight an FRPG? Well, by most definitions, yes--it has character customized stats, it contains "leveling," it uses fantasy tropes, there's magic and orcs and goblins and monsters.

Yet the type of enjoyment I get out of Torchlight is much, much different than the reward I get out of something like Knights of the Old Republic. Yes, there's combat in KOTOR, but the downtime between combats is significant. In KOTOR, you're expected to engage with the NPCs in the game world in more interested fashion, you're given choices (however rudimentary) that actually affect the fate of those NPCs. Yet, here's the catch--the reward cycle of KOTOR is much, much longer. There's an investment of time in KOTOR to get that sense of achievement. I think the sense of accomplishment is greater in KOTOR when you really do achieve one of the major goals, but the fact of the matter is, doing a single large-scale quest in KOTOR is a 2 or 3 hour ordeal. Yet I can hop into Torchlight, and within 5 minutes, I'm having "achievement gratification."

Now, is either way of approaching an "RPG" bad? No, not intrinsically; they're both valid ways of receiving "achievement gratification." But if a rules system is designed to push the "gratification cycle" into a shorter or longer time frame, then some players may be dissatisfied, depending on the experience they were expecting.

And I do think Celebrim is right in saying that it's a dangerous proposition to push pen-and-paper RPGs too far in the direction of "short-cycle achievement gratification," because ultimately that's a losing battle. The very nature and features of pen-and-paper RPGs make them ill-suited to heavy doses of "short-cycle achievement gratification." You have to get together in one location, read notes, discuss play ideas together, socialize, use tactics collaboratively, etc. All of which inherently push against the intrinsic need of a gamer who's looking for immediate, "short-cycle achievement gratification." Seriously, video games and other forms of entertainment do "short-cycle achievement gratification" better than pen-and-paper RPGs ever will. They're multimedia, they have lights, sounds, flashing colors, you can see your avatar on the screen with the biggest, baddest weapon, whereas in RPGs you're just imagining it. And you don't have to have a "GM" to keep pushing encounters at you; the computer just keeps sending the baddies your way, and you tactically respond. One could almost say that the entire point of pen-and-paper RPGs is provide a longer, more satisfying reward cycle, to provide a sense of enjoyment that cannot be obtained through other means.

 

[Starfox]

Success in a game of skill *is* an accomplishment - maybe a trivial accomplishment, but real, not illusory. Winning a game of chess is an accomplishment. Winning a game of Warhammer Battles is an accomplishment. Succeeding in a D&D session through player skill is an accomplishment.

I think you're shooting beside the target here. For me, the "Illusion of Accomplishment" is where you begin at 1st level fighting goblins that take you 3 round to kill, then advance to level 30 to fight balors that take you three rounds to kill with similar mechanics. Effectively, you have been re-skinned from 1 to 30 and the goblin has been re-skinned as a balor, but nothing really happened. Winning a difficult battle is not in itself an illusory accomplishment. But if the only result of winning said battle is that all numbers are inflated by 10% for the next battle, THAT is an illusion of accomplishment to me.

The key is how we use the word "accomplishment" - you use it to mean a task achieved, I use it to mean a reward garnered trough achieving said task. Yours might be better English, but the way I understand the use of "illusion of accomplishment" among gamers, I think my reading is the more common one and the one Celebrim is using (Celebrim, please correct me if I am way off)

Yet a few weeks ago, I picked up the game Torchlight [...] as far as I can tell, if Torchlight is fundamentally the same as Diablo (and by all accounts it is), then I do understand why Diablo I and II remained popular for so long. Diablo/Torchlight are classic cases of "achievement reinforcing gratification." Yes, there is some "strategy" involved in building your character, and utilizing the attributes/skills/powers/traps/magic in the most effective ways based on the encounter and terrain. But the real "reward" of playing Torchlight is the ongoing sense of "achievement leveling." I'm waiting for the next big weapon, the next big armor piece, the next gold stash so I can "enchant" my weapon to be more powerful, etc. Yeah, there's supposedly a plot thrown in about some evil underneath the mines, but it's really just an excuse to throw a bunch of bad guys in front of you constantly--and reward the player for successfully conquering them.

This is a VERY good illustration of the point I am trying to make here. And games like Torchlight can be very good entertainment - as long as you bye in on the illusion of achievement it provides. Which is in a way a good thing - we feel empowered, entertained, and can relax playing such games.


Which leads me to my next point. Using my definition of "illusion of achievement", all gaming is really about this illusion, the difference is only if we accept the illusion or not. To seem real, accomplishment has to bring some qualitative change, not just a quantitative change. For me, qualitative change generally involves a story change - the goblins are a local threat, the balors a global treat. For others it might be the difference between burning hands and meteor storm. For yet others it is a tactic in Chess or Go that is carried out well. But if this qualitative change is felt to be not real, then you've seen trough the illusion of achievement and lost the magic of the game. Because none of these rewards are tangible and real in the way a pay raise or a new car is. (the real-ness of such material rewards can of course also be discussed, especially if you go into religion. Lets not go there.) We have to bye in on the illusion to make them real or it all becomes just useless die rolling.

This whole post is kind of tangential to the main discussion and Celebrim's original thesis. But the problem with such a big issue as this is that you have to define the terms you are using quite precisely - this is what I've been trying to help to do here.

 

[Starfox]

In replying here, I have to contradict you for the sake of the discussion. I don't do that from contrariness or because I think your thesis as a whole is wrong, but because I find it interesting and worthy of discussion. I just wanted to say this so that my adverse stance to details is not take as a refusal of the basic premise - which I find interesting but unproven, certainly worthy of discussion and consideration.

I was off on a tangent at the start, responding to Celebrim's response to Obryn's post rather than to the original post- and yet such a complex argument as Celebrim makes stands and falls with its base assumptions.

Of all the attempts at rebuttle, this is by far the strongest. My only responce is to say that while that is true, in many cases making an attack involves a trivial decision. Indeed, often the decision is so trivial as to be perfunctery and made without thought.

The point when this is true is the point where I lose interest in the game.

But this in my opinion only leads us back to the original point I was trying to make. People are defining participation in such a way that it excludes certain types of participation, and despite protests the contrary I still insist that when you start taking apart that definition it ends up meaning 'participation where I can achieve a meaningful degree of success (even if ultimately we fail in the challenge)'. You want to say, "Well, it's not just participation, it's participation with choices." But I simply respond to that by saying, "When you say choices, you mean choices where there is a reasonable chance of success and where there is an expectation of success at least some of the time. If we played the game with a rigged die such that we could gaurantee that each of yourr choices ended in failure, the people who are protesting that they don't mean 'success' they just mean 'participation' will then complain that those aren't 'real choices'."

You keep trying to obfuscate the meaning by shifting from one word to the next, but so long as you retain the orginal within the implication of your new word, you aren't making any progress. In the context they are being used, you can't divorse participation or choices from success.

Basically, I agree with this rebuttal. I agree that in general a role-playing session is about resolving an event successfully. I only submit that in order to be fun to me, a game must have meaningful choices. If it isn't fun, the whole discussion is moot.

(Yes, it is possible to have a "doomed" story/game, where the task of the players is to portray their characters response to the inevitable and unavoidable doom - and to make their play more exiting, the inevitably of failure could be hidden from the players. This sounds like a convention scenario at a typical Swedish gaming convention from the 1990s - D&D and problem resolution scenarios were not big at Swedish conventions. But this is a special case and could be said to be a "bait and switch" trick pulled by the GM.)

 

[Chrono22]

Seriously, video games and other forms of entertainment do "short-cycle achievement gratification" better than pen-and-paper RPGs ever will. They're multimedia, they have lights, sounds, flashing colors, you can see your avatar on the screen with the biggest, baddest weapon, whereas in RPGs you're just imagining it. And you don't have to have a "GM" to keep pushing encounters at you; the computer just keeps sending the baddies your way, and you tactically respond. One could almost say that the entire point of pen-and-paper RPGs is provide a longer, more satisfying reward cycle, to provide a sense of enjoyment that cannot be obtained through other means.

This, this 1000 times. *rep*
Making pen and paper RPGs mimic video games in regards to challenges/rewards/gratification is a losing battle.
This is a slippery slope- but I don't really consider this a fallacy... seen as a continuum from super-dedicated gamers to super-casual gamers, appealing to more casual players will certainly broaden the player base, but only temporarily. So, to continue to increase the income from your product you continue to broaden the base... the thing is, casual players aren't dedicated customers- they stop buying your stuff and go somewhere else eventually. A PnP RPG can't do video games as well as video games without becoming one itself. Which is no problem- unless your selling point for the RPG is that the excitement happens in your imagination. When the game is reduced to a tactical-strategic combat game, the only difference between it and a video game competitor is that the competitor has better graphics and a larger player base. Your casual players have to expend time and effort imagining actions that your competitor's software can represent visually. Why would customers continue paying money for a comparatively inferior product? Goodwill and nostalgia can only get you so far.

 

[Bluenose]

However, I get the general impression that you are talking about 4E and its general design decision that the majority of attacks and skill checks performed by players should succeed. If that is the case, then that is a terrible example for your argument.

snip

If you want to make the case that game design is leading towards instant gratification and easy success, you need to prove that there is a game system where it is consistently the case that the players will always easily win every fight, regardless of variables. I don't think that is the case for 4E D&D or any other modern RPG.

Considering some of the arguments being made in the thread, "Why must numbers go up", where people are specifically criticising 4th edition for not creating a situation where their melee attacks are nearly always successful, it seems 4E can't possibly be the game in question.

 

[Ariosto]

The criticism of 4e in "Why must numbers go up?" is actually directed at 4e's making things consistently about the same. See the first part of Starfox's post #76 above for a statement of this concept of "illusory accomplishment".

In other words, not creating a situation -- at high levels, as in TSR-D&D -- in which the monsters' attacks nearly always hit, whereas everyone misses most of the time at low levels, is just as much the issue.

What is wanted is a clear sense of progression, of change. The very consistency that is so central to the 4e design is under fire.