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Author Topic: Signs of poor game design  (Read 16648 times)

Charon's Little Helper

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #150 on: November 27, 2020, 10:38:03 PM »
Well, that's weird.

I mean, I respect peoples opinions on whatever they want to hate, but D&D was such a pivotal stone in the evolution of the hobby, both for those replicating it and for those trying to get away from it, that I find weird someone hating on it. Specially so as a piece of game design.

I think that most D&D hate is one of two things (or a combination thereof).

1. They like taking potshots at the market leader (likely more true in the indie designer space).

2. They get frustrated with how difficult it often is to find a game to play anything except for D&D. Tied to this (and more in the designer space) is how it can be a bit frustrating to see people tie themselves into knots changing D&D into doing things it was never designed to do instead of just picking up a new system.


I like D&D pretty well (other than 4e), but the latter point can be a bit frustrating to me too.

Stephen Tannhauser

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #151 on: November 27, 2020, 11:16:34 PM »
I respect peoples opinions on whatever they want to hate, but D&D was such a pivotal stone in the evolution of the hobby... I find weird someone hating on it. Specially so as a piece of game design.

I think people don't hate D&D so much as an overall game, as they found themselves annoyed at the system's occasional tendency to produce nonsensical outcomes, or at certain genre-emulative/niche-protective rules that felt arbitrary when their purpose and context wasn't entirely clear.

And after all, it's precisely because so many people have invested so many play-hours into it that every possible place where it could be found frustrating or confusing gets turned up -- and it's precisely the emotional enjoyment of those hours that makes the memory of the annoying or frustrating bits stick.
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Kyle Aaron

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #152 on: November 28, 2020, 02:20:08 AM »
Quote
they found themselves annoyed at the system's occasional tendency to produce nonsensical outcomes
I'm reminded of that saying that fiction is more constrained than reality, because fiction has to be plausible.

In alternate history discussions, people sometimes write DBWI - double-blind what-ifs - where someone writes as though they're from an alternate reality, wondering how this actual historical event could have happened. "What if the British were defeated by the American revolutionaries?"
"That'd require the intervention of Alien Space Bats on the side of the Americans, how could a country that went on to defeat the French after almost a quarter-century of continuous warfare during which every European country at one time or another stood against them, be defeated by a bunch of farmers with muskets?"

I don't mind if a game system occasionally tosses up something crazy. The dice are always right.
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Rhedyn
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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #153 on: November 28, 2020, 04:01:51 AM »
My only issue with D&D is that the best versions of it don't have the D&D brand. It's also the worst game I'll play like McDonald's is the worst restaurant I'll go to. Now I like McDonald's,  but if you were worse than McDonald's I would never have any reason to go to your cause McDonald's was available.

Same thing with D&D. Why would I play a worse RPG? It then unfairly holds the worst spot in my personal rankings because it is the Gatekeeper to even be considered.

Ghostmaker

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #154 on: November 28, 2020, 11:05:26 AM »
A similar thing happened with an old AD&D fighter of mine. He started out with a slightly battered mundane sword and the DM quickly offered up a magic one among our loot. However, as soon I picked it up I couldn’t roll better than a 4 on the die and finally suffered two natural 1s in a row, the first time dropping it in the campfire and the second getting it stuck in a tree.

In frustration I just whipped out my old battered sword and proceeded to roll two natural 20s in a row followed by nothing less than a 15 the rest of the fight. The party, playing in character, presumed the magic sword to be cursed and left it stuck in the tree.

Fun story, right? Except it happened the next time my PC got a magic sword... including the critical hit the moment I abandoned it for my battered old blade. The third time I managed to shatter a sword expressly designed to cut through magic barriers on a magic barrier. No magic sword every worked for me, only mundane weapons.

The GM eventually just rolled with it and basically started playing things as if my PC was some sort of anti-magic anomaly (more accurately, anything magical I touched went haywire).

All because of dice weirdness.

In that respect I’d say the best representation of something like Dunning-Krueger would be task resolution using a d20 (vs. 3d6 or anything else that generates a bell curve).
Holy shit, that happened to me once. I was DMing a one-shot and part of the adventure involved finding a magic mace that would be useful later against some enemies (minor golems).

Unfortunately, any PC that wielded the mace could no longer roll better than a 4 on d20.

It was henceforth christened 'The Mace of Slack-Jawed Drooling'.

HappyDaze

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #155 on: November 28, 2020, 11:13:26 AM »
A similar thing happened with an old AD&D fighter of mine. He started out with a slightly battered mundane sword and the DM quickly offered up a magic one among our loot. However, as soon I picked it up I couldn’t roll better than a 4 on the die and finally suffered two natural 1s in a row, the first time dropping it in the campfire and the second getting it stuck in a tree.

In frustration I just whipped out my old battered sword and proceeded to roll two natural 20s in a row followed by nothing less than a 15 the rest of the fight. The party, playing in character, presumed the magic sword to be cursed and left it stuck in the tree.

Fun story, right? Except it happened the next time my PC got a magic sword... including the critical hit the moment I abandoned it for my battered old blade. The third time I managed to shatter a sword expressly designed to cut through magic barriers on a magic barrier. No magic sword every worked for me, only mundane weapons.

The GM eventually just rolled with it and basically started playing things as if my PC was some sort of anti-magic anomaly (more accurately, anything magical I touched went haywire).

All because of dice weirdness.

In that respect I’d say the best representation of something like Dunning-Krueger would be task resolution using a d20 (vs. 3d6 or anything else that generates a bell curve).
Holy shit, that happened to me once. I was DMing a one-shot and part of the adventure involved finding a magic mace that would be useful later against some enemies (minor golems).

Unfortunately, any PC that wielded the mace could no longer roll better than a 4 on d20.

It was henceforth christened 'The Mace of Slack-Jawed Drooling'.
Since we're sharing amusing stories...

In D&D 3e, Rangers were mechanically advantaged toward two-weapon fighting. My wife played a halfling Ranger using a pair of hand/throwing axes. She couldn't roll for shit with them. In an adventure, she found a +1 dwarven waraxe (a "hand-and-a-half" axe equivalent to a bastard sword). Without the exotic proficiency, she could only wield it with two hands--which didn't much matter to her since she was a halfling--so she started to use it and her dice rolls were remarkably better when doing so. She's avoided two-weapon fighting on every character since then because she associates it with her run of bad luck.

VisionStorm

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #156 on: November 28, 2020, 02:07:20 PM »
Well, that's weird.

I mean, I respect peoples opinions on whatever they want to hate, but D&D was such a pivotal stone in the evolution of the hobby, both for those replicating it and for those trying to get away from it, that I find weird someone hating on it. Specially so as a piece of game design.

I think that most D&D hate is one of two things (or a combination thereof).

1. They like taking potshots at the market leader (likely more true in the indie designer space).

2. They get frustrated with how difficult it often is to find a game to play anything except for D&D. Tied to this (and more in the designer space) is how it can be a bit frustrating to see people tie themselves into knots changing D&D into doing things it was never designed to do instead of just picking up a new system.


I like D&D pretty well (other than 4e), but the latter point can be a bit frustrating to me too.

There are also plenty of legitimate things that D&D can be criticized about, and plenty of fanboys to defend it or different editions of it, even since the old (or median?) days, which only fuels into the D&D-hate and tends to end in flame wars. I used to get into a lot of arguments with D&D players back in the day (the 90s), who would not play anything but Basic D&D or even learn other systems, but always had a criticism for any other games, including AD&D. It would get frustrating and we'd end up talking pass each other cuz they already had a preconceived notion about other games or systems that deviated from Basic D&D, while I was more interested in options and features that didn't exist in Basic D&D, and willing to try out other games and look beyond D&D assumptions, which only cemented my dislike for Basic D&D. Even to this day whenever I hear praises for Basic D&D I tend to roll my eyes.

Truth be told, I hate every edition of D&D for different reasons, but would also use features (or elements "inspired) from every D&D edition--even Basic D&D--if I was gonna make my "ideal" edition of D&D. I probably use 3e mechanics as a base, but take out all the clutter and simplify classes down to Basic D&D levels of simplicity, but replace class complexity with a revamped version of feats more comparable to Fantasy Craft in terms of power. I would also bring back old school HD caps, cuz even 9 to 10 HD max already provide ridiculous HP, but 20 HD is just absurd. I would make a complete frankenmonster out of D&D.

VisionStorm

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #157 on: November 28, 2020, 02:08:58 PM »
*double post*  :P

Eric Diaz

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #158 on: November 28, 2020, 02:17:37 PM »
These bother me the most:

You didn't playtest this, did you?. I feel this while running 5e campaigns. Curse of Strahd, for example, has NO REASON to be treated like an hexcrawl. It is something you don't notice browsing through the book, but it becomes apparent once you run it.

Useless multiplication of game mechanics. Not easy to explain, but basically redundant mechanics, all meaning the same thing. For example, how Barbarians in 5e get a bonus to initiative, armor, and dexterity saving throws... just give them a dex bonus already! Or how 5e has two IDENTICAL polearms instead of a single weapon called "polearm" (or two DIFFERENT polearms!).
« Last Edit: November 28, 2020, 02:24:37 PM by Eric Diaz »
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Bedrockbrendan

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #159 on: November 28, 2020, 02:33:39 PM »
These bother me the most:

You didn't playtest this, did you?. I feel this while running 5e campaigns. Curse of Strahd, for example, has NO REASON to be treated like an hexcrawl. It is something you don't notice browsing through the book, but it becomes apparent once you run it.


Would you mind elaborating on this one? I have read, but not played Curse of Strahd (leafed through it and it looked good quality but just didn't click for me as a Ravenloft book). Just curious about this remark

Bedrockbrendan

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #160 on: November 28, 2020, 02:37:48 PM »
I don't really play much D&D anymore (mostly play other games) but my take on D&D and D&D criticism, is it is a little like the audience score versus the critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. You can make a more critically successful game, but D&D knows what its audience wants and tends to cater to that. It also has a number of things going for it in terms of playability and campaign survival. While I don't play a lot of D&D, when I do return to it, which I do on occasion, it is just an instantly gameable system with conceits that work for prepping a campaign that will easily get off the ground.

Eric Diaz

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #161 on: November 28, 2020, 02:51:54 PM »
Would you mind elaborating on this one? I have read, but not played Curse of Strahd (leafed through it and it looked good quality but just didn't click for me as a Ravenloft book). Just curious about this remark

Sure! I wrote a lot about CoS, will try to make a summary with the relevant parts:

The map on CoS in an HEX map... but there is no reason to use it for an hexcrawl. All the significant locations are on roads.

You shouldn't have to "count hexes" like if you were exploring the wilderlands.

What you need is a guide to the distances in Barovia... The map of Barovia makes the campaign look like an hex-crawl, but there is no reason to look at it this way. The characters will not be exploring unknown locations (like they would on a hex-crawl), but the only traveling through roads and trails, and going to cities, castles, ruins, etc.

This should be organized as a point-crawl, but apparently they were not familiar with the concept. Going "off road" is possible but not expected and should carry explicit consequences.


In practice, you have to count hexes* to calculate distances and them convert them to time... to know how many encounters you'd have. If you just had the distance between places in miles (or, even better, hours), you could quickly see how many encounters an, more important, wether you can arrive at the next town before nightfall**.

*which is absurd because there are obvious "shortcuts" on the roads that make no sense if you're using it like an hexcrawls; the roads would make you slower
** huge missed opportunity of giving more emphasis to that

Here are some links:
http://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2020/09/curse-of-strahd-guide-part-iii-minimum.html
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2020/08/rant-bad-hexcrawl-in-tomb-of.html
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Charon's Little Helper

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #162 on: November 28, 2020, 05:28:36 PM »
There are also plenty of legitimate things that D&D can be criticized about...

Oh sure - no argument from me. D&D is hardly a perfect system - no edition of it. Plenty to complain about when the context is right.

I was more referencing the people (especially indie designers) who go on and on about how D&D is horrible and anyone who plays it is stupid etc. (albeit - a bit of hyperbole here on my part) even in situations where you don't need to bring up D&D at all.

Spike

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #163 on: December 23, 2020, 09:37:31 AM »
Weirdly I only just now remembered a big one that was supposed to go into the OP, but... despite being the inspiration for the thread somehow got utterly forgotten when it came to write it up.

Build Substituition Meta Rules*

This is when the game designer puts in methods of making alternative 'builds' for characters, usually to overcome some deficiency in his design, as a patch, and is closely related to the phenomenon of keeping PCs weak and incompetent (the zero to hero, where Zero is often roughly equivalent to a twelve year old child in terms of general competence).  The first time I ever noticed it, and a decent example to explain what I mean, was in Brave New World, where they introduced a new Martial Art using the 'Spirit' stat to make 'battle nuns' more competent fighters.  I vaguely recall that by the end of the game line you could have a Martial Art based on any of your stats, so you could have a nerdy martial artist who could beat Bruce Lee by punching him with his brain-thoughts, or maybe I only imagined that because of the implications of the addition of the Two-Inch Prayer Fist.

I've noticed that the Mutant Year Zero game line does this an AWFUL lot. There are only four attributes and twelve common skills, but there are about twenty talents between teh books that let you change which attribute covers which skill (usually for the Career skills, but still...). So, for example, you can have an investigator who solves crimes with his 'social' stat instead of his intelligence stat, meaning he can put together and spot clues even if he has a room temperature IQ.  This is especially hilarious as the MYZ's dice pools are generally small enough and the cost of a talent is the same as a an additional point in a skill that it should almost never be viable to take these talents unless you really did make a genuine Moron as an Investigator. So the real reason is, so far as I can determine, to take advantage of the already incredibly Meta 'Push' rules.

To me these sorts rules represent a point in the game's design phase where the designer should have asked himself 'why does a battle nun 'not work' unless she can stack a combat skill under her faith stat? Why would any player need a special talent to make a social/intuitive detective viable over a smart detective (In this case: Because of the need to "Push" rolls, and with four Houses each given a single Attribute they can Push, without this talent only members of House (For Elysium, different Year Zero games divide up the push stats differently) Kilgore would ever be viable detectives!).  Its a immersion breaking patch rather than a proper fix.   The BNW model (alternate skills) is just nonsense that damages immersion, in the MYZ model, you actually wind up trading rare character resources (talents, which cost XP and represent a major part of your character's growth) to simply' tread water' in trying to make a non-optimal character (which should totally not be non-optimal... Recall: the purpose here isn't to make a Columbo who solves most of his crimes by talking his suspects into incriminating themselves (a bad description of Columbo, I know...) but to patch over the fact that only Investigators from House Kilgore (who get free Pushes for Wits checks), would actually be competent in the High-Wiff MYZ ruleset. SInce in real life people don't work that way we make reality break so people can stack more skills onto their 'free push' stat via talents so they can acheive basic competence.

I'm not trying to pick on Brave New World (not that I'm worried about rabid fanboys for a more or less dead game) or the Year Zero engine games. I've seen this elsewhere, but they were the examples most ready to mind for me, for reasons I think I explained well enough above. 













*I honestly have no idea what to call this, so forgive the clunky name, eh?
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Itachi

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Re: Signs of poor game design
« Reply #164 on: December 23, 2020, 08:05:32 PM »
Never had a problem with that. On the contrary, it always seemed to me a good method for giving variety in character concepts.

Which, again, only shows that everything you posted so far is just your personal preference and has absolutely nothing to do with good/bad game design.