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<blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 9678952" data-attributes="member: 6690965">It seems to me that there's at least 2 lines of argument against a fail forward model, which I'm categorizing as &quot;the argument from naturalism&quot; and &quot;the argument from gameplay.&quot;I'm frankly less attached to the argument from naturalism, at best I think it can serve to make the game state more understandable to the player and avoid negotiation. The idea is that the situation should unfold according to prior inputs and not be causal to a new board state of the result of an action is reasonable just the status quo prevailing. I agree largely with what you're laying out here, that nothing happening is nothing happening as a rebuttal; I don't think naturalism is it's own defense. There should be a gameplay purpose and the only reason I think you'd want a status quo result is to ensure it's understandable to the player. That is, a player can't necessarily map consequences from &quot;I try to pick the lock&quot; to a fail forward result like &quot;the guards hear you and open the door to see what's happening&quot; unless they're explicitly told ahead of time this will happen.Which brings us to the argument from gameplay, as that immediately creates the grounds for negotiation of either that specific consequence, or for the player to propose a different action to get a different consequence. Negotiation is the death of gameplay, because it subsumes all other mechanics. It always has the potential to be more effective or to overturn any other kind of mechanical interaction, so if it's allowed to creep in, it becomes the gameplay loop immediately.The negotiation issue aside, fail forward runs the risk of removing tactical agency. If you make players commit to actions without knowable consequences, they lose much ability to discriminate between risks in the first place and it's not necessarily clear that they should prefer picking the lock to having down to the door in the first place.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Pedantic, post: 9678952, member: 6690965"] It seems to me that there's at least 2 lines of argument against a fail forward model, which I'm categorizing as "the argument from naturalism" and "the argument from gameplay." I'm frankly less attached to the argument from naturalism, at best I think it can serve to make the game state more understandable to the player and avoid negotiation. The idea is that the situation should unfold according to prior inputs and not be causal to a new board state of the result of an action is reasonable just the status quo prevailing. I agree largely with what you're laying out here, that nothing happening is nothing happening as a rebuttal; I don't think naturalism is it's own defense. There should be a gameplay purpose and the only reason I think you'd want a status quo result is to ensure it's understandable to the player. That is, a player can't necessarily map consequences from "I try to pick the lock" to a fail forward result like "the guards hear you and open the door to see what's happening" unless they're explicitly told ahead of time this will happen. Which brings us to the argument from gameplay, as that immediately creates the grounds for negotiation of either that specific consequence, or for the player to propose a different action to get a different consequence. Negotiation is the death of gameplay, because it subsumes all other mechanics. It always has the potential to be more effective or to overturn any other kind of mechanical interaction, so if it's allowed to creep in, it becomes the gameplay loop immediately. The negotiation issue aside, fail forward runs the risk of removing tactical agency. If you make players commit to actions without knowable consequences, they lose much ability to discriminate between risks in the first place and it's not necessarily clear that they should prefer picking the lock to having down to the door in the first place. [/QUOTE]

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