To RNG or not to RNG

[zizard]

The movie example is bad. That character is 100% guaranteed "dead" to you within 3 hours. They are solely a tool for the director's purposes.

[Tynan]

So much all of this. I sometimes feel as if the design of RimWorld isnt about stories, it's about masochistic punishment on repeat
.....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.

Can I ask what difficulty you play on, and why you chose that difficulty?

[Toast]

1. Should the game have a such a thing as bad luck outcomes that's not induced by some obvious, non-pressured, voluntary player decision? Or should I make a universal design standard that nothing bad ever happens unless the player actively induces it or makes some clearly-traceable mistake to cause it?

2. Should I just ignore some classes of player feedback as simply not linking up with what RW is? Are some players worth leaving alone to try to make a game that's different from the usual assumptions? Even if it leaves them pissed off because they intepreted a story generator as if it were a skill test?

Ultimately only you can decide this, but I have trouble imagining how you would restructure the game this way this late in production.

3. Should players be able to consistently avoid losing people/resources even at high difficulty? At any difficulty?

I think it is eminently reasonable to expect not to lose pawns on Peaceful.    Anywhere above that, death seems reasonable as a possible outcome.

4. Is there a way to set expectations (relative to the whole game, or relative to a given difficulty level) to encourage players to accept some degree of randomness to game outcomes? Or will they always reject this randomness and demand to be rewarded in accurate proportion to their skill/effort?

The recently revised difficulty level descriptions ("you WILL lose people" etc.) are probably a good way of preparing people. They are quite blunt--and, I think, accurate. But I think another way to get people to accept some bad randomness in the game would be to add some more *good* randomness. The addition of inspirations, auroras, and other positive events have already done a lot to make the game feel less like a Perpetual Punishment Simulator. More in this vein would be very welcome.

[mndfreeze]

So much all of this. I sometimes feel as if the design of RimWorld isnt about stories, it's about masochistic punishment on repeat
.....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.

Can I ask what difficulty you play on, and why you chose that difficulty?

Yup.  In older versions I was a Randy extreme player mostly.  I found Cass's predictability boring after a while back then.  When 1.0 hit and I came back to the forums to read up I adjusted down and now I play Rough, or whatever 1 above medium is, per your suggestion to me in another thread.  I've bounced between all 3 storytellers pretty evenly since moving to 1.0 to try em all out.  My best success has been of course on Phoebe, Cass was murderous as expected, and Randy is well, randy. He giveth and he taketh away. 

Please don't take my comments to mean that I think the game is too difficult specifically, it's more a commentary about the whole 'for the story' ideal that gets thrown around here as a reason for anything bad that happens and someone doesn't like it.  It reminds me very much of other games where people just say 'git gud nub' instead of addressing the actual mechanics at hand.  I 100% fully  agree that extreme players should be getting punished hard, that's the point of the mode and all, and I love RNG, I just feel Rimworlds RNG is very specifically negative for the most part and that has a lot to do with coloring the players feeling and experience in the "story".  I rarely feel like I got some epic uber dice roll critical hit and slayed a boss type of emotion for example, but I often feel like I'm being punished for either not exploiting a game mechanic to survive (i.e. killboxes, planting mines around ships, doors, etc) because of the way some RNG is built and the storytellers work.  If the start to finish of a game experience was say an hour vs 20 hours it would be a totally different experience, or if pawns were more expendable / less unique and more 'starcraft soldier' like in your example and readily replaced, but when you put such a huge investment of time, emotion and energy into your game all to get wiped to a spiral of death it FeelsBadMan, not epic.   

IMO I've been super happy with 1.0 so far.  I think you've been doing an amazing job listening to feedback and trying adjustments, especially when we are only a small part of a much larger audience.  I'm just trying to give as honest of a feedback as I can about how it all plays for me specifically. 

I think if pawns were somehow balanced a little better in the way they were offered to players, so people felt they needed to be picky less often, skills more evened out or something, I dunno, that might help a lot of people who have issues with losing people.  Other than losing your entire colony, losing the one pawn in your team of 6 that can contruct better than a 4 can be brutal, then trying to get a replacement for him can take forever to never.  Maybe some sort of calculation that looks at your pawns available and averages the stats around or something so the "replacement" options that come around though various events are at least kinda similiar to what was lost would be an idea.  If I lose my single double passion doctor who was at 16, and all my other pawns are at 3 with no passion, make sure the next crash pod, or downed raider, whatever, will always roll like a 7 with passion or something.  Could be adjusted/balanced to be easier/harder on different difficulties as well, so extreme players still may just have to live without a new doc. Just food for thought.

[Andy_Dandy]

The fun with Rimworld is all the bad things that can happen. There is alot to plan arround to increase safety and reduce the chances of bad luck. I really hope things like for instance friendly fire isn't nerfed even more again.

[gipothegip]

I'm thinking about how to handle this sort of thing. Thought it may be worth discussing. Questions to consider:

1. Should the game have a such a thing as bad luck outcomes that's not induced by some obvious, non-pressured, voluntary player decision? Or should I make a universal design standard that nothing bad ever happens unless the player actively induces it or makes some clearly-traceable mistake to cause it?

I believe in the former, but with the proviso that careful planning should play a role in mitigating losses and perhaps decrease the chances of certain bad events occuring.

This is already extant in the game's design, IMO.

2. Should I just ignore some classes of player feedback as simply not linking up with what RW is? Are some players worth leaving alone to try to make a game that's different from the usual assumptions? Even if it leaves them pissed off because they intepreted a story generator as if it were a skill test?

Not entirely. I don't believe you should abandon what this game is meant to be, but you should still consider criticisms.

Perhaps telegraphing in-game what one can expect could help. I think the difficulty descriptions are a good example of something you've already implemented that fits this idea.

3. Should players be able to consistently avoid losing people/resources even at high difficulty? At any difficulty?

At higher difficulties, I don't think so; however, on lower difficulties, I think it's quite reasonable that if a player makes the right decisions, they should be able to get by without drastic loss.

4. Is there a way to set expectations (relative to the whole game, or relative to a given difficulty level) to encourage players to accept some degree of randomness to game outcomes? Or will they always reject this randomness and demand to be rewarded in accurate proportion to their skill/effort?

It's hard to say. I think there will be some expectation of the latter, as that's how most game's work.

Again, I think telegraphing what to expect, and essentially setting the tone will help.

This does give me an idea, though. Perhaps there could be a storyteller more tailored to the "skill test / reward" system you brought up. One that, rather than creating some harrowing tale, is more geared towards a playstyle of challenge and reward where the outcomes are more proportionate and consequential of player actions.



I also like the idea brought up that perhaps there could be more positive rng. We already have some of this of course. Basically, give the stories generated some ups, allow the ability for things to go good. It seems things go bad quite often, and they get worse until you're off the planet or dead. A story of course needs struggle, it needs stakes, but it mitigates itself if things are always going to shit and the player knows what to expect.

Of course, there should be leeway for higher difficulties to be masochistic, and for Murphy's Law to be a given, but maybe easier difficulties could generate more positive stories. Of course, reworking / new storytellers could achieve this too, rather than having that tied to difficulty alone. For example, Phoebe could possibly be inclined towards more positive stories, meanwhile Cassandra can keep things consistently harrowing.

[CarnRage]

Hi all, first time posting! The discussions on 1.0 balance/design have lured me out from the shadows.

For some context I have played Rimworld for around 1100 hours, mostly on extreme permadeath.
I was a serial save scummer until 1.0 when I read about the view to play for the "story" rather than to try and complete perfect runs ( I managed quite a few late game 20 yr+ bases during previous builds ). Dropping the difficulty ( down to rough for now ) and playing through the disasters regardless of outcome was the best decision I must admit. Even though the urge to save scum would hit repeatedly, the real enjoyment for me was when my colony would come together and persevere through loss and hardship, working together to fill the gaps and continue to press forward.

1) I think "bad" RNG makes for good story. Unpredictable events can help build better decision making. Sure you can't really apply lessons learned until the next run but hindsight after an event can usually reveal possible steps to have mitigated the damage.

Perhaps on the very lowest of difficulty settings "bad rng" can be quite low.

2) Not every player is going to like every game design decision. Simply design the game how you believe it should be played, players will still be able to utilize mods and dev tool to adjust some aspects of their game.

3) I don't believe players should be able to avoid loss in any difficulty above the very lowest settings ( peaceful, basebuilder ? ). Of course varying skill and preparation all those other different factors come into play, so an extremely skillful well prepared and "lucky" ( pawn roll, map roll , disaster roll etc ) COULD go through a game of normal with no losses but that is mainly due to their preparation.

Expected losses should scale with difficulty , scaling sharper the harder the setting.

The ability to recover from losses in lower ( all? ) difficulties would also keep players interested in continuing the story of their colony rather than straight abandon. Perhaps this comes down to how raids are scaled in comparison to wealth value, pawn value ( skill, bionics etc ) and on lower settings how much these 2 values have dropped after previous events.

4) Relabel the difficulty settings. Move every setting up 1 , then extreme is now blank and is renamed to insanity ( and maybe made more difficult   )

I think part of the problem is everyone has been playing Rimworld ( myself included ) as a skill test rather than a "story generator" experience and value a flawless run on a difficulty setting beyond their own skill level more than the sense of achievement, resolve and enjoyment of the story for correct decision making applied to the design , use of pawns and every other aspect involved during running a colony in Rimworld.

Sometimes on Rimworld things just don't go your way...

[mafurw]

Sorry, I did not the whole thread, just the initial post, so please ignore if this was said before.

Regarding how to motivate players to accept bad luck: Maybe have a counter of unlucky events, probably weighted. Divide this by game time spent and multiply it with total colony wealth (or something) to create a luck-adjusted score. Having a lot of bad luck will then increase the score significantly, assuming the colony survives. Certainly everyone loves high scores, so bad luck can now be good luck and some players will complain about too few major incidents.

[Jumper]

The movie example is bad. That character is 100% guaranteed "dead" to you within 3 hours. They are solely a tool for the director's purposes.

This example makes no sense. You are saying the length of the movie is 3 hours and then those characters are dead to you. If the movie lasted 10 minutes or 10 hours it is the same outcome. Look at tv shows some last for 24 episodes at about 40 minutes each, so that's 16 hours with the same outcome as your movie example. Aren't all characters just tools to move a story along be it movies, tv or games.

[Jumper]

Sorry, I did not the whole thread, just the initial post, so please ignore if this was said before.

Regarding how to motivate players to accept bad luck: Maybe have a counter of unlucky events, probably weighted. Divide this by game time spent and multiply it with total colony wealth (or something) to create a luck-adjusted score. Having a lot of bad luck will then increase the score significantly, assuming the colony survives. Certainly everyone loves high scores, so bad luck can now be good luck and some players will complain about too few major incidents.

So you are suggesting manipulating luck ? so that's not luck good or bad any more then. If you are having a run of bad luck in life it doesn't instantly mean you will have a run of good luck to counter balance it. People will often take little things after some bad luck as a positive to try and counter balance that feeling.

[Syrchalis]

The fun with Rimworld is all the bad things that can happen. There is alot to plan arround to increase safety and reduce the chances of bad luck. I really hope things like for instance friendly fire isn't nerfed even more again.

While friendly fire really pissed me off before, now it seems a bit ... non-existent? I feel like I don't need to take it into account at all. Before it was nerfed it felt sometimes absolutely ridiculous how much my pawns shoot each other. I prefer now over before, but that isn't to say there is something inbetween.

[Triade]

Tynan, you are designing a game, not a movie. When players see no reason to continue a failing/failed story, they won't. Why not give them more reasons to continue playing until the actual game over screen? The snowballing is gonna be hard to fix, like in most strategy games, but at least give the players something for rolling with it.

That's kinda the whole point of this game. You make a colony, and weather RNG you can't control. Crashed poison chips, raids, solar flares, toxic fallout, Manhunter packs, Etc. The goal is to respond as best you can and try to survive despite all of this. Some of it is beyond your control.

No, this is bad game design. Situations where you know you have lost without the game giving you the game over screen are the worst, because there's no sense of accomplishment to gain here and it's just a waste of time.

If that was the whole point of the game as you described, you might as well remove the events and just add a 1% chance each minute that a game over screen appears. The effect will be the same; the goal is still to survive, it is beyond your control, but at least it doesn't give you the false illusion of being able to continue when it finally ends.

Since not every colony can be successful, it should also reward the players for unsuccessful ones, at least if a certain time was invested in them. Most games do this by a progression system. Even FTL or Binding of Isaac have it, althought more indirectly.

[Nainara]

The fun with Rimworld is all the bad things that can happen. There is alot to plan arround to increase safety and reduce the chances of bad luck.

I really think this last part is the crux of the issue.

To illustrate, consider a story of extreme rng circumstance: Three survivors of a doomed starship crashland on a rimworld. On the day of their arrival, they scavenge what supplies they can from the debris and build a makeshift shelter. On the second day, a meteor falls from the sky and crushes everyone as they sleep. The end.

What's wrong with this story, aside from Cassandra being a bona-fide jerk? There's effectively no player agency in the outcome. Rng can be a great catalyst to kick off a crisis, but the real story is in how the colony responds. Likewise, when the meaningful outcome of the event is baked into the rng roll, (e.g. Engi is instantly killed by friendly fire) there's little opportunity for the kind of drama that builds a great story.

[DariusWolfe]

Late to the party, but I'll give my feedback to the OP.

1. Should the game have a such a thing as bad luck outcomes that's not induced by some obvious, non-pressured, voluntary player decision? Or should I make a universal design standard that nothing bad ever happens unless the player actively induces it or makes some clearly-traceable mistake to cause it?

Yes, bad luck events should just happen. But understand that players, even those who understand this, are going to be angry when they occur. We want to win. Adversity along the way is interesting and helps to generate a good story, but at the end of the day, we want to see a story of triumph. Losing colonists hurts, emotionally, tactically; I think maybe losing colonists should be one of the very few things that requires player fuck-up. Note, a colonist who's basically incapable, like less than 50% capable in vital things, is essentially the same thing as losing a colonist for many players.

2. Should I just ignore some classes of player feedback as simply not linking up with what RW is? Are some players worth leaving alone to try to make a game that's different from the usual assumptions? Even if it leaves them pissed off because they intepreted a story generator as if it were a skill test?

Yes? I mean, you should read it, and if a particular strain of feedback becomes prevalent enough, take a moment to rethink what you're doing with RW; I'm not saying you should cave to feedback that disagrees with your goals, but if it's strong enough, just take a moment to assess if your goals are the best ones; if you decide they are, move on. Like, I'm always going to keep griping about melee combat; I do not believe melee should have parity with ranged combat. I believe it should be very situationally viable. So you should probably mostly ignore those parts of my feedback, unless there starts to be a strong enough strand of agreement with my points. Then reconsider, decide, and move on; Maybe drop a note saying that you thought about it and what your decisions were based on.

3. Should players be able to consistently avoid losing people/resources even at high difficulty? At any difficulty?

People, mostly, yes. Resources, not so much. If the goal is to keep people playing until they're satisfied or bored with a particular colony, which I would assume it is, then you want to avoid things that will induce rage-quitting. Losing a valued colonist is the easiest way to do that. (see my point about what may also count as 'losing' a colonist in my response to #1) Me personally, I would be okay with considerably longer recovery times so long as it kept me from losing colonists entirely. When you read a story or watch a movie, a named, developed character dying is a Big Deal^TM (unless it's horror; then it's just part of the countdown). I think it's the casual, random fuck-it-all of losing a valued colonist that triggers the rage reflex with people. A tornado just ripping right across a pawn, a meteor hitting them, a one-shot head removal. That shit hurts and it makes people want to just quit a game that might be otherwise going well.

4. Is there a way to set expectations (relative to the whole game, or relative to a given difficulty level) to encourage players to accept some degree of randomness to game outcomes? Or will they always reject this randomness and demand to be rewarded in accurate proportion to their skill/effort?

Just doing what you're doing, dude. People are going to expect what they're going to expect, and there are limited ways for you to change that. Some people are absolutely here for the completely random death-and-destruction, others want to be rewarded for optimal gameplay with perfect outcomes, and others still want a more balanced approach. All three types of people are going to come play Rimworld, and give feedback, and probably a couple more types besides than I'm not thinking about.

We're here for the game you're designing. If we disagree with your choices, we'll either mod them out, accept them and adapt, or we'll move on. I don't consider myself a hardcore player by any definition, but I've got just shy of 400 hours in Rimworld; if I quit now, that'll be about 7.5 cents per hour that I paid for this game, and that's a hell of a return on investment; some games I really, really enjoyed (like AC: Black Flag, for instance; random piracy FTW) are considerably more expensive games in comparison.

[Jumper]

Tynan, you are designing a game, not a movie. When players see no reason to continue a failing/failed story, they won't. Why not give them more reasons to continue playing until the actual game over screen? The snowballing is gonna be hard to fix, like in most strategy games, but at least give the players something for rolling with it.

That's kinda the whole point of this game. You make a colony, and weather RNG you can't control. Crashed poison chips, raids, solar flares, toxic fallout, Manhunter packs, Etc. The goal is to respond as best you can and try to survive despite all of this. Some of it is beyond your control.

No, this is bad game design. Situations where you know you have lost without the game giving you the game over screen are the worst, because there's no sense of accomplishment to gain here and it's just a waste of time.

If that was the whole point of the game as you described, you might as well remove the events and just add a 1% chance each minute that a game over screen appears. The effect will be the same; the goal is still to survive, it is beyond your control, but at least it doesn't give you the false illusion of being able to continue when it finally ends.

Since not every colony can be successful, it should also reward the players for unsuccessful ones, at least if a certain time was invested in them. Most games do this by a progression system. Even FTL or Binding of Isaac have it, althought more indirectly.

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.