The Trap of Balancing Mechanics


levism84

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Okay. I am not sure what other people's background are when it comes to games both electronic and otherwise. I imagine a game like the Long Dark attracts an eclectic group of individuals with diverse background and interests, which is great, but the problem I keep seeing on the boards is the same problem I see in many gaming communities. There is an inherent difficulty in balancing game mechanics between hyper realism and cartoon-like simplicity.

This isn't anyone's fault, it is just the nature of trying to combine these two extremes. One benefit of hyper reality is the feeling of immersion, but it comes at the cost of complex programming codes, huge databases, complicated interfaces, and (at least for some players) extraneous details that simply don't matter. One benefit of cartoon-like simplicity is the ease of programming and play, but it comes at the cost of poor immersion, the threat of players feeling the system is dumbed down, and (at least for some players) frustration that certain logical actions can't be taken. When people try to balance these two extremes, it usually ends up looking like a movie where half of it is shot with live actors and the other half is made of chibi cartoon characters performing the "difficult" actions or stunts.

I've seen people fight with themselves and others trying to build the "prefect system" for a pen and paper role-playing game only to get frustrated and give up. I really don't want to see that happen with the Long Dark. I truly believe the best game will look like a movie where everything is animated but it is consistent. Immersion won't be so easily broken if there is no switched to and from extremes because the "rules of the world" are consistently applied across the board. The Devs are doing an awesome job trying to combine realism in a survival simulator with the ease of game mechanics. I just want people to understand why they don't spend hundreds of programming hours adding "realism" content that more than likely will break immersion in the overall feeling of the game.

I just wanted to say that.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm a bit puzzled what you are trying to say here, or even if you know it yourself. You make your case very badly right at the beginning when you take some basic things for granted, like that realism is inevitably complex or that simplicity is the opposite of realism. First of all there really is no such thing as "hyper" reality. There is only reality and fantasy. And just because you simplify something it does not automatically turn into fantasy. In a computer game, unless we are talking about some imaginary alternate reality, you must invitably simplify, and simplified reality still remains reality. Wether you click an "Eat" button or require the player to move their hands as if they hold a fork, and also make chewing movements, is still both realistic. They are just different levels of abstraction, and I guess we agree which one could work and which one is total fail ;)

Another preconception is the one that realism is the cornerstone of immersion etc. But really, all these things - realism, complexity, immersion, ease of programming - have nothing to do with each other. How you achieve either of them is another question. You can build realistic systems with simple rules, or complex rules to express pure fantasy.

I claim that this game does not cater for fantasy at all, and that's what really makes it stand out. Apart from the science fiction backstory I have not seen anything resembling "fantasy" in this game. It always seems to strive for realism, and as long as there is no magic or super human abilites involved, I don't see how realism can be compromised with this approach.

I think what you are really trying to say is that you hope that the developers keep the game abstract and don't become bogged down with unnecessary details. And I think most people will agree with you, I certainly do. I think we all come here because we like a game that strives for total realism but also tweaks variables like time, item wear etc so that we are able to play a game, and leaves out stuff completely that is already stupid in real life. Once the game starts to simulate how well we brushed our teeth and we get allergic reactions to condensed milk or wool sweaters because our character is lactose intolerant etc that would be still realistic, but stupid ;)

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My original intention was to stress the need for balance between overly simplistic and overly complex; I apologize for the confusion on my part. Upon reexamination, I believe it is possible for a game to be simultaneously simple and capable of immersing players into the game world. My fears stem from some of the suggested additional mechanics on the board, such as water freezing in backpacks or maintenance verses repair, which outwardly appear to complicate the mechanics with very little in the way of "payoff".

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Yes I totally agree on that.

I can empathize with people who want to see rust on their cartridges if they do not oil them, I really do. But everything that leads to constant micromanagement should be in a special game mode, let's call it the hardcore mode. Let people switch it off. Many will do, other consider it to be the holy grail of appreciating the game. I have no problem with either of that.

Most of all it is all a matter of priorities. Many things do not sound like a totally bad idea, but detract from gameplay. Some other feature would be a good idea per se but still have a very low priority. Like wether the game calculates how your diet provides you with how many vitamins and so on and in the long term, you can get scurvy. Those are features I would like in the game but I fully understand that for a long time the developers will concentrate on more maps, animals, items and so on.

Besides, those guys seem to be doing hell of a job so I am not worrying.

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And since we were also discussing what we mean with realism,

here are things that I would consider "unrealistic", "fantasy" etc:

instant health regeneration (medkits, potions)

magic

bullet time

fantasy weapons/items (gauss cannon)

zombies

player able to defy laws of nature, sticking to walls, or fling from building to building like tarzan

There are many things I don't consider unrealistic, even though they are inaccurate, like the accelerated degradation of items. Simply because this is a game that is clearly designed to run in accelerated time, and everything happens a lot faster than in reality. The game adjusts values so that we can play in accelerated time, but the question here is rather what are the optimal values?

And when I wrote that there is nothing in the game that I feel is unrealistic, I must correct myself. There are a few things:

painkillers instantly heals sprained ankle <-- case of instant health regeneration

reclaim wood at the same spot for an infinite amount of time <--defy laws of nature

player can sleep infinite amount of time <--defy laws of nature

player can successfully forage wood in complete darkness

etc

But I am pretty sure those are things that will go away in future version.

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Items don't degrade faster because time is accelerated. If you put a hatchet down on the floor of a cabin it will degrade after a period of time. Not sure how long this would take in TLD since I don't store my hatchet on the floor, but lets say that it's 50 days for a 100% hatchet. Now time is accelerated in TLD, making those 50 days go by in a matter of hours, but it's still 50 days of in game time. No matter if it passes in seconds, hours or years of real time, it's still the same amount of in game time. It doesn't matter how much they accelerate the time, it still represents 50 days. What I'm trying to say here is that the acceleration of time doesn't make the hatchet degrade faster, it still takes the same amount of in game time for the hatchet to degrade, it just passes by faster in real time.

But a RL hatchet doesn't degrade if you leaf it on the floor for 50 days. Not the cheap ass hatchet I got from the home depot center anyways, it's been hanging in the shed for 2 years now and doesn't have any noticeable wear. But if the in game hatchet would last for 2 years of in game time, you would never have to repair it because you'd be dead long before your hatchet brakes down. The same holds true for every other tool in the game. So to make the game more interesting and give us something to use out repair skill on, tools degrade much faster than they would IRL. And that's fine as long as there are enough raw materials to repair them with. Even if some degradation rates need a litlle (or a lot, using a hatchet for 10% condition per hour anyone?) tuning.

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I know what you mean. I agree that hatchets and other items degrade much too fast. But it is still realistic that all things degrade and need repair, and it is not possible to model it at an accurate rate and still have fun.

Item degradation needs to be accelerated way more than game time if we want it to become a factor. It's pretty obvious that the developers are trying to achieve just that. The accurate model of degradation won't go anywhere, degradation becomes completely irrelevant if it is in any way accurate. A hatchet could be passed from grandfather to grandson without much degradation. Iron tools last for generations. Food in cans can be stored for decades. I certainly don't want to play as long ;)

The game simply MUST accelerate the rates unless you want to run the game 24h/d for years to come. THIS IS NOT A QUESTION OF REALISM BUT OF OUR TIME!! We should stop acting like little children about bringing this up to the developers, because they know that this cannot work.

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Sure Burning Bridges, we all know that and I agree with you, but in order for the players to feel satisfied, you either must give them the opportunity of maintaining their tools or reduce the wear. Because if every time you use the hatchet and it wears down by 10%, you will get annoyed at this fact, since it defies reality so much, so you break the immersion right there.

If it is a lower amount of wear or you have other opportunities to maintain your gear, it won't affect you this much, since it will be simply a game mechanic, same as the time acceleration.

So a middle ground has to be found, where they still degrade quickly, but not frighteningly fast. Otherwise it may break the suspension of disbelief.

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Couldn't agree more. But to be honest, I think the 10% the hatchet degrades now is simply because this hasn't been balanced yet. I've heard the rifle and knife used to degrade much more per (hour of) use and those have been adjusted already to be more reasonable. I'm sure the same thing will happen with the hatchet.

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Yes probably HL simply has had no time to fine tune these values. After a stressful period of development, they got most particular systems working, and it is normal that adjustments will be done "later", when everyone is fresh and has seen the big picture. The Sandbox alpha was meant as a public test in order to iron out the systems, I think they clearly wrote that somewhere in the past. Any premature optimizations from HLs side would have been be a waste of time. Now that we all played the game for a month and understand the game much better, we can make qualified proposals for the variables.

I don't think they are so far from good values anyhow. 10% is too much I think everyone agrees on that. But if it was only 1% that would mean a 90% hatch would be good for ca 180 pieces of wood (~2 per hour). That again would be (roughly) 180hours of fire, or 300 liters potable water. It would also mean that a hatchet used once a day would last for ca 3 game months. That would be too much from the gameplay perspective wouldn't it?

I think as Trandor already says. It is more a question of how much scrap metal and tools are available, and if a thereotically unlimited supply becomes avavailable ( .. forage for metal ?). Iu seems a lot of people used to hoard fir wood, from my own experience that is already moot because fir wood is available from foraging outside (without hatchet btw!). The same with tinder, once it was made a renewable resource it does not feel so super important how much tinder you can hoard.

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To tell you the truth, if there was an ample supply of scrap metal available I wouldn't even mind the 10% per hour degradation it has now. I would just repair it after every couple of hours of foraging. But I don't think there will be all that much metal in the game, so that's the main reason to want a lower degradation. That and the fact that it just seems too unrealistic.

I think it should be possible to use the hatchet (100%) for several hours (2-4) several times per week (2-3) for at least 4 weeks. So that would mean approximately 10 hours per week for 4 weeks = 40 hours for a 100% hatchet. So a degradation of 2% per hour would seem reasonable to me. Why not 2.5%? Because the hatchet also degrades while you don't use it!

If this were the case, I'd actually use the hatchet for cutting wood instead of skinning animals. I didn't even bother picking up the hatchet in the forestry lookout tower because I didn't think it was worth carrying it back to my base at the CO.

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Part of the issue with item degradation could be addressed by having items degrade faster when they are used for an unintended purpose. For example, perhaps the hatchet degrades faster when skinning deer and wolves, but slower when using it for its purpose of chopping wood.

Additionally, what if non-consumable items (clothing, tools, weapons) didn't degrade when stored, degraded 1-3% when used for their purpose, and degraded much faster when used for an activity other than their purpose. For example, clothing can be stored indefinitely without degrading, can be worn for a 1% degrade in condition every 12 hours (2% a day), and the clothing suffers 10% degrade or more when the protagonist is attacked/mauled/damaged by a wolf or other hostile creature.

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