To RNG or not to RNG

[Triade]

Your point is a bit counter intuitive about the movie. Yes he is making a game but you want it dumber down to be like a movie. Don't worry x just died a helpful person will magically appear. How dull is that , story light.


Also why reward players for failure. That's the everyone should get a medal for taking part approach.

I never said that. Also, every good game rewards you for failure (even if it's just fun), else you wouldn't continue playing them.

[tommunism]

I'm surprised by a lot of the responses to this forum, it seems many Rimworld players want it to be a non stop victory generator which is clearly not what the developer has intended.

I find Rimworld to be most satisfying when you roll with the punches. In game you are essentially in a constant state of war with one or more factions, and men die in war, sometimes heroically, intentionally, or mayhaps they take a stray bullet to the back of the head. Even the best trained and well equipped fall victim to circumstance, the random number generator reflects this.

If however you are inclined towards victory you can save repeatedly, this is something I've done in the majority of my playthroughs. I often play while watching TV or listening to music so I've never opted for permadeath, in case my colony went awry when my attention was lapsed.

Regardless I will often save before a climactic battle so I can replay and experiment with different tactics, there's no shame in this, it can be fun to see what could of happened and often I find defeat was inevitable, I simply wasn't prepared enough.

In conclusion, Rimworld is a difficult game, and this difficulty generates tension and narrative which makes it compelling, if you're not looking for this then save scum or lower the difficulty, the idea that the game should be made easier to accommodate a players power fantasy is not worth indulging.

[Triade]

I'm surprised by a lot of the responses to this forum, it seems many Rimworld players want it to be a non stop victory generator which is clearly not what the developer has intended.

No one said that. Good difficulty design =/= easy game.

[dearmad]

Your point is a bit counter intuitive about the movie. Yes he is making a game but you want it dumber down to be like a movie. Don't worry x just died a helpful person will magically appear. How dull is that , story light.


Also why reward players for failure. That's the everyone should get a medal for taking part approach.

I never said that. Also, every good game rewards you for failure (even if it's just fun), else you wouldn't continue playing them.

That is patently untrue. Good games do not reward failure, omfg. Sounds like your only exposure to "Games" is video and the last decade of PC games...

[tommunism]

The difficulty design in Rimworld is great, a combination of player agency, structured progression and random circumstance, the level of which can be customised by the player. If this results in an unintended conclusion, well then the game has achieved what it set out to do.

[Triade]

That is patently untrue. Good games do not reward failure, omfg. Sounds like your only exposure to "Games" is video and the last decade of PC games...

Clearly you can't read. Btw., making a game difficult is easy and not a challenge for any game developer.

[Emulsion]

I'd love to see things like positive RNG on stuff for example, lancer critical fails its shot and one shots its pal centipede for example. When the type of bad RNG people are complaining about happens its usually because its colony ending or killing the fun to an extreme level they don't want to play anymore, but the good events that happens are generally minor they hardly offset it except in specific circumstances.  I feel the RNG was actually better on things before a lot of nerfs happened.  Like traders fighting on your map for example.  Nerfed because easy gear/weapons, but that was actually RNG in your FAVOR occuring.  It also could be a life saver from a huge raid happening.  I don't really understand the mentality that people have about all the mechanics in this game needing to somehow lead to struggle and suffering in order to have a story.

I agree. I loved the fighting traders, was always a fun story for me!

I like RW for it's unique challenge, don't want it to be an always-win game, of course! Wouldn't have played it for over 700 hours otherwise, I guess.

But I really like the randomness of things happening and for me its more interesting if they can be good and bad and anything in between.

[EvadableMoxie]

I think a good example of the type of RNG I'd like to see in Rimworld is something akin to X-com or FTL. Few would say FTL or X-com are games that 'generate an endless stream of victories' and yet it is possible for very skilled players to consistently succeed even on the harder difficulties, despite the games having a large amount of RNG.

I think a big part of that is two fold.  Firstly, while RNG can hurt you in both games, skilled players have tools to recover.  Secondly, high level play generally revolves around reducing and/or eliminating variance whenever possible, and the player has tools to do that.  On Cassandra extreme it feels like bad RNG just leads towards a death spiral your colony can't recover from, and the reason people generally don't try to play it out is because after the 5th or 6th time you see the pattern.  You know when you've lost 3-4 hours of play before you actually lose.

[Jumper]

That is patently untrue. Good games do not reward failure, omfg. Sounds like your only exposure to "Games" is video and the last decade of PC games...

Clearly you can't read. Btw., making a game difficult is easy and not a challenge for any game developer.

He clearly can read. I would love to know your background in game design ? I have experience for a couple of commercial companies many years ago and I think Tynan is doing some game design here that is quite reminiscent of  very famous game developer that thought the story was the objective, not just letting people win.

Having some jeopardy is what makes the game. Tell you what, why not just put in a sandbox mode where your people are all super human and cant die. You will then get that fuzzy feeling you obviously crave.

[EvadableMoxie]

I'm surprised by a lot of the responses to this forum, it seems many Rimworld players want it to be a non stop victory generator which is clearly not what the developer has intended.

With very high skill play in X-com or FTL, you can win nearly 100% of runs you attempt.  Would you call those games 'non stop victory generators'?

[Jumper]

I'm surprised by a lot of the responses to this forum, it seems many Rimworld players want it to be a non stop victory generator which is clearly not what the developer has intended.

With very high skill play in X-com or FTL, you can win nearly 100% of runs you attempt.  Would you call those games 'non stop victory generators'?

in fairness they are very different games. though brilliant games in their own right.
The older versions i grew up with were much better but also much harder.

[EvadableMoxie]

They are different games, but my point is that this idea of having to decide between RNG or a game where skill determines the outcome is a false choice.  We can have both.  The key is to have RNG on the level of making things interesting and not on the level of creating colony death spirals.

That's why while I'm okay with RNG, I want safeties in place.  Like, it wouldn't be so bad if you can randomly lose body parts and eyes if you could consistently get healing mech serums instead of them also being completely random. That's an example of how we can RNG while also having tools for the players to adapt to it.

[tommunism]

I'm surprised by a lot of the responses to this forum, it seems many Rimworld players want it to be a non stop victory generator which is clearly not what the developer has intended.

With very high skill play in X-com or FTL, you can win nearly 100% of runs you attempt.  Would you call those games 'non stop victory generators'?

And this is based off what evidence, your personal experience? When I play FTL I find I can rarely get to the endgame, there are too many variables that I can't control that affect the outcome. I don't tend to blame my failings on bad game design however.

[zizard]

With very high skill play in X-com or FTL, you can win nearly 100% of runs you attempt.  Would you call those games 'non stop victory generators'?

And this is based off what evidence, your personal experience? When I play FTL I find I can rarely get to the endgame, there are too many variables that I can't control that affect the outcome. I don't tend to blame my failings on bad game design however.

There's a community of high skill players in FTL that have basically 100% success rate on normal mode.

[EvadableMoxie]

And this is based off what evidence, your personal experience? When I play FTL I find I can rarely get to the endgame, there are too many variables that I can't control that affect the outcome. I don't tend to blame my failings on bad game design however.

I used to think FTL was an RNG based game before I saw Lethalfrag and Darktwinge play it.  Many players have win streaks in the 20s and 30s, and one even claimed to have won 80 games in a row on hard.  A quick google search for FTL win streaks will bring up quite a few.