thread: 2006-03-06 : Unpopular Idea #2: Punish the Loser
On 2006-03-07, Walt wrote:
From a basic game design point of view, the reason a death spiral is bad isn't that it leads to death. It's bad because the outcome becomes predictable. A "success spiral" is equally bad. Any time lag between when an outcome has become predictable and when it is decided upon is bad, because it's an interval in which play no longer sufficiently contributes to the outcome.
Another thing that's bad if if the outcome remains too unpredictable for too long. If it does so, it means that early successes aren't giving enough advantage to the side that achieved them—in other words, having the better results so far doesn't put you sufficiently "ahead" ( = more likely to win in the end). Which means the early rounds haven't sufficiently contributed to the outcome.
So, the Scylla and Charybdis of "reward the winner punish the loser" and "avoid death spirals" are simply the balance between predictability and unpredictability, or as I often phrase it, stability and instability. Stability establishes that the leader is enough more likely to win to make getting into the lead worthwhile. Instability establishes that the underdog has enough chance to come back and win to make continued play worthwhile.
I've often heard that "game balance" is a useless concept because there are so many different and conflicting definitions of it. But to me, the balance between predictability (aka stability, positive feedback, reward-winner-punish-loser) and unpredictability (aka instability, no-death-spirals, chance-of-an-upset) is the All-Ecompassing One True Definition of game balance. Most other definitions I've seen of game balance are special cases or instances of this.
This balance can apply to role playing games on many scales of play from small (e.g. within a single multi-round resolution) to large (e.g. across the character advancement or reward cycle, or on entire character arcs). The most typical instability components are longshot chances of results extreme enough to generate reversals. But there are many other methods.
This makes NinJ go "Hey, that's interesting, Walt."
A lot of my struggle with Shock: has been a fight with randomness. First, there wasn't enough. Then there was too much. Now, now it's fun. And it's right: it's where predictability is high but not absolute that things are most interesting.
This makes BL go "I had a game design once"
In which you rolled a 6-sided die. 2-6 was an expected result. 1 was an unexpected result.
If I had kept up with this design, I imagine I would have ended up at The Pool or Matrix Games. Instead, I got Polaris.
This makes FSF go "I call the "death spiral" situation "It takes too long to lose""
It may be harder to notice the converse ("It takes too long to win") because the intermediate steps might be fun in a little sort of way.
Games that make it easy, and expected, that folks will concede when the outcome has become obvious are nice.
This makes WF go "I agree."
NinJ, that makes sense but it doesn't have to be just one fixed ratio. There can be a reasonable range of unpredictability arcs. Golf, if the handicap system is working, should start out completely unpredictable at the first tee, but by the time you're on the back nine it's OK to be fairly (but not absolutely) certain of who's going to win. BL: Very interesting; the meaning of "unexpected" can get very deep in RP. FSF: Yes; an early draft of my post used chess as an example. Lots of positive feedback both in material and positional aspects (balanced somewhat by dymanical complexity that makes reverses possible, due to pieces' ability to project power to different parts of the board simultaneously), so most games end in resignation.
This makes SF go "Positive feedback = instability, not stability"
Positive feedback allows a small fluctuation in starting conditions (I win this one conflict) to lead to a massive change in subsequent conditions (I win the game). Negative feedback is stabilizing, because the faster anything deviates from "normal," the harder negative feedback smacks it back down: Look how many biological functions (e.g. insulin) rely on negative feedback precisely for this reason.
