Anything After Detroit?

[Alendor]

so, i managed to get to Detroit, and got access. and i'm wondering if theres any more progression after that point. as of right now i can't really find any way to progress. I'm not really in much danger at this point either. I'm able to make supply runs out to the wild with ease, and between my bow and rifle its really a peace of cake. I'm kinda just saving up for the augments. Thing is i can survive almoast indefinitly doing this, and was just curious if ftheres more to do past this point, or if the game just needs to be more fully developed.

is a great game tho, had me hooked up until the the issue described above ofc

[DerRidda]

I don't think the main story line goes anywhere beyond Detroit yet but there are still some larger encounters out there in the wasteland. Let me just put it this way: If you aren't running around with a clown mask on your head yet, you aren't even close to having seen it all. ;)

[Daniel@BlueBottleGames]

Lol, yes. There is the clown mask, for one thing :)

The plot is unfinished, yes, so more development is needed on encounters. That said, the plot isn't completely linear, so it's possible to reach Detroit without seeing everything. I'm trying to develop encounters in a way that players can uncover clues and story at their own pace, in the order that interests them. So each story unfolds differently.

With that in mind, as DerRidda said, there might be some encounters out in the wilderness that you've missed. And due to the design, some that you will have necessarily missed because they are closed in your current play session. I.e. some encounters are active, and others hidden with each game, regardless of your choices. These are randomly determined each new game.

So my guess is that you've probably seen most of what's been developed for story so far, but not all of it :)

[Alendor]

ahh, thanks for the heads up. between mad hatter saying to come see him for future work, and the appartment zone in the city being "i should come back later," i was wondering if i missed something or if there was an unclear means of further progression that i may have missed

[Daniel@BlueBottleGames]

Yeah, that's my fault :) Too many loose threads I have yet to tie-up!

[Alendor]

also, just a suggestion. but maybe for a game design point of view, it may be better to have all the story elements possible in one play through. as i discovered only through coming to the message boards that you would need multiple play throughs to find every story bit and piece.

it may be very possible other players may play the game in a similar means i have and gotten to a point where they can survive a long time and miss alot of the content thats being developed. that means your spending alot of time and money developing content that some people will not be able to experience.

after all, alot of people will go into thiss with the mindset of the main goal being to survive one life as long as possible. where making only a portion of the content available per life, it can be at odds with the overall player goals.

ie. encouraging the player to survive as long as possible, while at the same time telling them that if they want to see more story elements they need to cut that playthrough short and start over. kind of conflicting messages sent to the player in those regards

any ways, just some observations and suggestions from a customer point of view.

fun game, keep up the good work man

[Caerold]

Actually, I'm of the same opinion. I get plenty of replay value each time I start a new character. I'd prefer if you didn't lock out certain plot threads/options randomly.

[Kaaven]

Alendor, caerold, I have to disagree with you guys. Consider those random branches an interesting extension to random encounter system.

There is like 50+ random encounters, out of which 3-4 will happen every game. Do you really feel all those dozens of situation should play out, one after another, at the start of the game, just so that everybody can experience them all, on their first play-thought?
Or all the 100+ newspapers articles and data files should be handed to the player at once so he doesn't miss one?

That of course would be silly, and if you follow some discussion you will discover than, if anything, people would like more randomization anyway. After all, the first encounter gets quite old quite fast when you have to go through it at the start of every game.

I do feel that randomization of content, including making sure that not all of it is available at one time, is essential in creating a rewarding experience of exploration. Walling off content might be a bad thing in a games designed to be played once, but NeoScavenger, just like rogue-likes on which it is based, is made to be played multiple times anyway, re-playability built in its very core.

[Alendor]

of course it would be silly, thats why we didn't suggest to put them all back to back right at the start of the game. that was your idea, and a horrible one at that.

there would be nothing stopping the developers from having more unlock as time progresses, and obviously not in a linear fasion. right now we are being penalized for doing well in the game by locking us from story elements. i don't see any reason why over the course of a game lasting thousands of turns that the random encounters can't be spaced out.

what on earth would make you even to begin to think that they would all play at once back to back is beyond me, that would be a horrible idea.

[Daniel@BlueBottleGames]

I should point out that I'm designing the game such that each playthrough could still achieve all the core plot points. The random content in each game is supplementary, and is intended to make replays of the game more interesting. You're going to die a lot in NEO Scavenger, so having some random content means each new attempt might see something new.

You should still be able to complete the story each time, though. You just might take different steps on the way there.

Also, if the player is going to be given any meaningful choices to make, those choices have to close some doors. You can't simultaneously blow up Detroit and live happily ever after in Detroit, to make up an extreme example. The player would have to choose one outcome, forever locking out the content of the other.

It's true that this means I spend effort making content some would never see, but I'd rather have that than no interesting choices to make.

[Kaaven]

Alendor, I simply stated my disagreement with your thesis by using a purposely exaggerated example: you claimed that developer should design the game in a way that makes sure all the content is available to the player - giving it all up at the beginning is a sure way to assure that. But it is silly of course, just as what Daniel mentions with having all the endings during the same game.
Dan's example, in my opinion, illustrates the point better (no surprise here) - locking content is instrumental, whenever to create choices with meaning or sense of exploration, as a story-telling device. Without it you'll get a "corridor feeling" even if in each game the pieces are re-arranged.
Also, by claiming that all content should be in one game you treat the game as if it ends with the character's death - which is not really a case, in my opinion with anything even remotely related to rogue-likes. As I said - this kind of game are meant to be re-played and slightly different content in each game is a good way to make that a way more pleasant experience.

[Caerold]

Kaaven, as much as I respect you and your tireless dedication to monitoring all the NS boards, you did go into a bit of a strawman there. If you need to exaggerate someone's position to argue against it, you probably don't understand it well enough (almost ANYTHING can be argued against if you understand it well enough).

Note that I don't claim such understanding here -- I worry that I'm likely misinterpreting what options are randomly (un)available.

I've got no problem with random encounters being encountered... randomly. I would suggest it not be limited -- I want to be having such encounters for a long time.

I also have full faith that D wouldn't design a game where it was randomly impossible to complete the story.

Here's where I'm coming from: if I manage to survive 2 months in the wastes I'd like to know I at least had the OPPORTUNITY to experience everything the game offers my character build. Otherwise I feel like I'm being punished for not dying or restarting in order to see Content XYZ. This is especially pressing when the game only allows for a single character slot natively.

Don't decide for me that I shouldn't have the opportunity to do XYZ on this playthrough, if indeed that's what's happening. Instead, allow me to make the choices and determine my own story. If the plot dictates that my own actions close off options, well then, that's cool and meaningful. Rand(XYZ) dictating that I cannot do/find XYZ is less so.

[Kaaven]

OK, first of all, sorry if I made my point more convoluted that it supposed to be. Secondly, I worked under assumption that we know, to some extent at least, what kind of content we are talking about, but just for clarification (spoilers ahead in the next section, for those who do not want to read it - those encounters provide a little more insight into world's back story, nothing game crippling):

There are three locations that have a special branch, allowing player to experience additional encounter with a person, representing certain power-players in the world of NeoScavenger - only one of those "extended" encounters is available, at random, in each game. So you cannot meet all those people, but only one of them. Those locations are: Zom Zom's (where player can meet Mister Stout, who want's to buy a location of Cryo Lab from him), Strange Forest (where a White Lady can be met after the fight with monster, delivering supposedly helpful items to player) and Isotope Mine (where player can meet with Radiation Bob, with whom player can exchange his Talisman for Hot Brick or a location of the Allegan Fairgrounds).

I assumed we understand that I am talking about additional content, simply because creating a game that randomly prevents user from reaching it's ending at all, is way past any "wrong design decision". It is simply broken, unethical on the developer's part (selling faulty product), and in my opinion, should entitle the user to the return and money refund. That is something beyond any discussion.

However when it comes to design of a rogue-like game (or any exploration game for that matter) no one should feel entitled to ALL the lore and content in a single go, because the game is made to be re-played.

[Caerold]

Thanks for the clarification. Sounds like we simply disagree, which I'm fine with. I'm of the school where replayability comes from choosing a new character build and experiencing the user-generated stories (the ones we end up telling ourselves) that emerge from the randomness inherent in the rogue-like map, item and entity generation. I don't see why a player shouldn't be able to experience all those branches on one character, barring story reasons.

Can anyone really claim they think the randomness of those few programmed (and time-intensive) branches comes anywhere CLOSE to reproducing the uniqueness and replayability already in the game? Rather, I feel like D is locking away some of his own wonderful storytelling and gaining very little for the effort he put into it.

Of course, it's his choice to make, and he's already stated his position on the matter.

[Kaaven]

Originally posted by caerold:

Can anyone really claim they think the randomness of those few programmed (and time-intensive) branches comes anywhere CLOSE to reproducing the uniqueness and replayability already in the game?

You know, I feel, it doesn't have to compete with uniqueness of the game mechanics. I would see it more as enriching the feeling.

Let's say, strait out of head, that the very first encounter was randomized like that - on one try you can meet the Dogman, like it is now. But sometimes there's a group of bandits inside, instead and using skills give equally nice, but different rewards/situations. And on yet another try, the Lab is empty, but there is a sniper waiting outside that can be disposed/avoided in several different way. Or, just like in on fan story recently posted on BlueBottleGames, there is a corpse inside and a situation involving Dogman and some raiders outside...

Many cool possibilities, that in my opinion, would benefit the game - by adding re-playability but also building unpredictability in players - right now you are sure what will happen from second try onward. Cycling through 4-5 beginnings at random, would make player more tense and in-character.

But that's only my opinion, and it would be impossible to do by Dan alone, anyway. But if I were a rich sponsor, that would be something I would finance for sure :D

[Daniel@BlueBottleGames]

These are interesting points, for sure. And I won't claim to have the answers, as I'm still kind of feeling this out as I go.

Before going into branching content, I'll first mention a bit about how the random "mini" encounters work.

For reference, they are each assigned to a random hex at the beginning of each game. There are about 90 of them, and 10 of them are active at the beginning on the game. As such, the rate that you discover them is tied directly to the rate at which you explore the map.

Depending on which are encountered, and how the player responds, "some" of the remaining 80 are slowly added to the map. This means that for the vast majority of them, you will only see them later in the game, after experiencing the first ones.

In practice, this means the same 10 become overused a bit if the player restarts the game a lot. However, it also means that characters surviving longer (and exploring) will encounter more content not accessible to the early game. Indeed, it's possible that choices in the first few random encounters could block off the rest of the initial 10, and open up a different group.

So that's one way in which content is segregated from one session to the next. Theoretically, discovering and responding to these in the same way each game could yield the same results, but random placement makes this unlikely. (Though, you probably wouldn't notice much of a difference until experiencing 5 or more.)

As for the random assignment Kaaven mentioned, the intent here was to make each play a bit different. I've had more than a few players request multiple starting locations, which would seem to have a similar effect. Kaaven's example of multiple starting conditions in cryo would also be similar.

Would such effects be undesirable? Are they different than encounters being randomly triggered later in the game, instead of at the beginning?

I'm asking, by the way. As I mention above, I'm not an expert on this subject, so I'm interested to see other angles. Are there other games that serve as good examples of this technique (or against this technique)?