How does everyone feel about every decision counts games?

[Kes]

We do not tolerate personal attacks on this forum.  While disagreements can be deep, they should always be expressed in a way which respects the other person.

@Athryl

You meant well, but please do not mini-mod.

 

[Tai_MT]

I, for one, like my decisions to count.  If the dev is going to ask me "what do you do here?" and let me select an option, it better do something.  I don't like every choice going the same route, doing the same thing, not affecting anything.  They don't have to be big things that change, but they have to be important things that change.

Otherwise, you end up with the messes that are "The Walking Dead" games where every choice is an illusion, everything is pretty much set in stone, and the devs put up a lot of text to make you think something matters, when it doesn't ("So and so will remember that").

Am I person that restarts if I didn't get the choice I wanted?  Usually depends on how egregious it is.  If I choose something sensible and half my characters die, then yeah, I'm going to restart.  I have restarted entire questlines in Skyrim because the game took too long in the quest to basically let me figure out what I was meant to figure out to make my choice (namely, making me have the choice before I have the information needed to make the choice I wanted).  Or, sometimes I'll change my choices based upon what loot I would obtain if I'd made the other choice instead.  If I only get 100 GP for making the "good guy" decision, but I get the "Sword that kills everything in a single hit" for the evil decision...  Well, I'm more than willing to take my 25 Evil Points to get that sword, which can be obtained nowhere else.  Fable 1 had that problem with its non DLC ending (you can get 100 good points and the second strongest weapon in the game... or 100 evil points and the strongest weapon in the game!  which choice do you want?  Cue me murdering my not-so-psychic-or-clairvoyant-sister-who-didn't-duck-my-sword in order to get the best thing in the game.  Then, cue me donating a few gold pieces to get my 100 good points back).

As for games with "branching storylines".  Well, you'd only need to read my blog to see why that is a bad idea.  There's a reason developers don't do them, and after about 10 minutes of trying to branch your story, you realize why.  I do, however, think that if you're going to have some kind of "moral system", then it should be an entirely new experience to play as evil if you originally played as good and vice versa.  It's kind of annoying to still be beating "the big bad", even if you're evil.  Even worse when it's good characters telling you to do it, despite knowing that you eat babies and punch nuns on the face.

 

[tlst9999]

Or you could make it like this. I'd buy it.

 

[OM3GA-Z3RO]

Personally my teams project that is underway has a lot of choices but we are making it with choices that give players the illusion of choice AND actual choices that matter and can effect some outcomes, we would like to give players the benefit of the doubt and a sense of false security of what they are doing so where they least expect it they can either get rewarded or punished for their actions.

Personally I like games with choices but if every choice is important then it will just start to bore me because I will always know what is to be expected, I'd rather be kept on my toes for not knowing whats going on.

 

[Venthros]

Ditto on the whole "it's incredibly difficult" line of thinking from a dev point of view.

I think player choice goes a long way to ensure that the player has a gratifying experience, so long as the branches are well fleshed-out and are not strictly black-and-white.

The Witcher 3 is a great example of a game that is closer to perfect than any other player-choice system.

 

[SLEEP]

Every choice can't matter. the Stanley parable parodied this as part of its exploration of choice space, but many games highlight the idea accidentally or on purpose. First, you need to admit to yourself that you can only make some choices matter. Then, you need to decide what choices these are, and build your story around that. Are your important choices about which doors to go through? The allies you choose to pick? Who lives and who dies? The cause you align yourself with? Good VS Evil? Compelling narratives can and have been built around all of these, and their are countless other examples I haven't listed.

Are all choices equally valid, or is there a single narrative to pursue through "correct" choice? Are all narratives as compelling as each other, or are there a few clearly more meaty ones? Are you using divided paths that reconnect, or is every story separate? Is there some meta-narrative thing where all paths are valid and exist in the canon at once, despite being contradictory to each other? Are there wrong choices? Are there flavor choices that ask things of the player rather than the game? Again, all good examples with good narratives written around them. These choices, the ones YOU make about choice, are the most important and significant ones and also the most complex.

Phew... this is too much choice. I can't write a good conclusion to this post with all these choices. back to the drawing board.

 

[Matseb2611]

If a choice doesn't change anything in the game, then why even have it? What purpose does it serve exactly? Now I understand simply changing the colour of your outfit and stuff wouldn't affect anything and is just for cosmetic purposes, but being put in a scene and told to make a choice where both choices end up the same is just pointless. It does nothing for the narrative and nothing for the gameplay whatsoever.

 

[Shaz]

Maybe it doesn't change the ending, but it could change the path you take to get there - give a different experience that may otherwise not be had.

 

[The Stranger]

Maybe it doesn't change the ending, but it could change the path you take to get there - give a different experience that may otherwise not be had.

I actually like choices that change the path you walk in order to reach the end. What I don't like are choices which do absolutley nothing, or, they do so little they may as well do nothing - such as altering one or two lines of dialogue.

If you want to tell a certain story, without deviation, then simply don't include choices. Not every narrative needs choices - some are ruined by them; certain paths may seem poorly crafted, with endings that make little sense. Nowt wrong with a linear game. Saying that, I do prefer choice and consequence over a linear experience; so long as the choices and consequences actually make a difference.

 

[OM3GA-Z3RO]

If a choice doesn't change anything in the game, then why even have it? What purpose does it serve exactly? Now I understand simply changing the colour of your outfit and stuff wouldn't affect anything and is just for cosmetic purposes, but being put in a scene and told to make a choice where both choices end up the same is just pointless. It does nothing for the narrative and nothing for the gameplay whatsoever.

It is closely to something called: "Being in your own character." Some games do this, they give you decisions but those decisions give you options of what type of character you want to play as, almost works like D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, you can play in character of the person you playing or you can be some other character that you prefer more. D&D tests out what kind of character you are as well before starting the game but being able to interact and be a character you want to be is pretty fun.

 

[Nirwanda]

I'm on the camp of those who enjoy it, even if the difference is minimal, like choosing wheter to ask a or b to an npc, therefore learning different information depending on choice.

On the matter of reloading, it depends on three of factors:

1 - Was the result foreseeable? If, for example being nice to an npc leads to angering them, I might reload since I ended up with an unwanted result.

2 - Am I engaged enough? If I'm invested enough in the game and characters, I'll be more inclined to take the roleplayer's route and stick to my choices.

3 - This is a little more nitpicky one and a non-factor in RM games but: loading times. I might stick with a choice just because I'm too lazy to wait for the game to reload.

 

[woootbm]

I think this conversation illustrates an issue that has come up with choice-based games: make sure you set proper expectations for the player. As shown by Mass Effect, some players seem to think it's possible to make a triple-A sized 40 hour adventure with infinite iterations. Like, "Did you punch the reporter or not? The fate of the galaxy depends on this!" No. No it doesn't. You know why that scene "matters?" Because of how that scene ended AND how it played out when she returns in subsequent games. The moment, people. Sometimes just the moment itself is what matters in the choice.

That being said, there are things I consider "bad" choices. Such as:

-One choice is a nerf to your character. Unless this game is about trying to figure out which choice is right and NOT about personal choice. Basically, any time a player has to choose between progressing and shooting himself in the foot, he's gonna choose to progress.

-Chat options that don't give off distinct personalities. Sometimes choices in games merely come down to "How does your character talk?" I think these kind of choices are just dandy! But when every answer is simply different wording without different personality, it becomes pointless.

 

[Fernyfer775]

I personally hate when my choices have huge impacts on the story. I feel like it's too much pressure and it gives me more anxiety than anything.

For example, I truly LOVED the Mass Effect series, but dear God, the weight of the decisions you had to make in that game truly hit me like a ton of bricks every time.

 

[Sylarra]

From a player's perspective, choice is really great, but from a developer's, it's just plain ol' scary. I do think there is a medium that can be reached though, so long as not every single choice and every single piece of narrative response determines something. Instead, I think that there should be a few "big" choices that, depending on the order, can give you a certain ending. It gives the player some choice, but not completely, while also making it very easy on yourself by not having all this extra work to do.

 

[Accendor]

Has someone been playing Until Dawn?

While I really enjoyed playing Until Dawn for the first time (like REALLY enjoyed it) the second time was already a HUGE letdown.

The main problem is that most of the butterfly effects do not really have an impact on the ending and the story. So all in all in many cases it does not really matter, what you chose.

I wrote a reddit post a while ago about this topic and all butterfly effects and how they do (not) have an influence on the story / the ending at all. Have a look at it below, but be aware that there are several heavy spoilers and it is a very long post. I also made some comparisons to the Zero Escape Series (999)

Spoiler

This is going to be really long, I hope you guys like to discuss about this stuff with me.

I really liked this game the first time I played it, but after the second playthrough and watching a Let's play, I am really disappointed about the meaninglessless of most of the choices. Part of that is surely because every choice that is connected to the Psychopath does not matter at all (except the "Who is going to die?" stuff with Chris and Ash). Knowing that Josh is the Psycho

makes half of the choices ingame meaningless in the second playthrough because you already know that he does not want to hurt anyone.

But let's have a look at it:

Any of Your Business:

Chris may lose trust in Sam. No deal it all since nearly all of those stats only affect really small aspects of the game. But this was the first effect to show how everything works, so this is fine.

Rats With Bushy Tails: Who would shoot the squirrel anyway? :/ However, not shooting it will allow Sam to escape the psychopath. But it does not matter at all if she gets captures, because nothing can happen to her, since Josh will not hurt her.

The Soul of Discretion: Matt may know about Emily and Mike flirting. This affects the relationshop of Matt and Mike. However, they do not meet again for most of the game and it does not matter at all for future events.

Whose Side Are You on: It affects how Matt and Emily interact. While interesting, it has no actual influence on the outcome of a single event.

Be Her Hero: See, this could have been really cool. There are 3 possible outcomes in the cabin with Mike and Jessica: She doesn't really want to have sex with you and has still her mantle on when she is captured, she is not really sure and will wear shorts and a shirt and she wants to bang all night long and is in her underwear. Which event you trigger depends on different decisions during your way up to the cabin and your relationship with Jessica and the end of the way. However, again it does not have a real impact because only for fan service it does not matter which clothes she wears. But image if hypothermia would be a real issue and by actually getting her naked she would simply freeze to death in the mines at the end. See, this decision line could have been really, really important. But at the end, it does not matter again.

Something For Later: Important for Sams Escape. But this doesn't matter again, since she is never in real danger and there are other ways to escape.

To The Rescue:T his one is really important and affects if Jessica lives or dies.

... And Which one Will die: It does not matter if you choose Ash or Josh, Ash will always be saved and any other influence this decision has is meaningless. Later however, Chris has to choose if he shots Ash or himself. If he shots himself without pointing the gun to Ashley she will fall madly in love with him and open the door of the lodge for him later, saving him from Handigo. If he shots her, she will coldly watch his death. So while the first part is really meaningless, the second part is really good!

At What Price: You don't even have to trigger this event at all, but to be fair, most of us triggered it the first time. So, you can chose to amputate your fingers (WHICH HAS NO INFLUENCE ON THE GAME AT ALL) or to keep your machete. While the machete proves usefull later, it does not matter if Mike has it, because he can not die at the moment where he needs it the second time. Again, this whole decision is pointless.

Man's Best Friend: It's much cooler of course if your befriend the wolf and the whole second sanatorium scene will be different with the wolf following you will be different than without him. So from my point of view, this is a good use of a butterfly effect.

On The Same Page: This is one of the most important decisions in the whole game and you don't even know why unless you try out a lot. If you decide to agree to the tower AND give Matt the Flare gun later in the game, he will fire it immediatly. After dropping into the mines with the tower, you are now no longer able to try to save Emily and therefore she will hate you in the future. If you decide to help her twice without having the flare gun, Matt will die. If Matt says he does not want to go to the tower they will wind up later there anyway. The difference is that if Emily now gives Matt the gun, he will not just, so he has it, when he is attacked in the mines, after the tried to save Emily twice. But if Emily doesn't have the gun, she will get bitten by a Wendigo, which will cause Mike to aim the gun at her and then she will hate Mike (or he will kill her). See, this is a really complex scenario with a lot of different outcomes. This is a good butterfly effect that would have been even better if the future relationship of Matt, Mike and Emily would have a game related influence.

Run Or Hide: Psychopath Event -> Meaningless

In Self Defense: No idea why anybody would kill the deers, but at this point you can kill Matt, so this is an important butterfly effect that directly affects gameplay.

Who Gets The Gun and "Save Yourself" and "Forewarned is Forearmed": See "On The Same Page" -> Good One

Stick Together: This is not only no choice but it also does not matter what happens, Flamethrowerguy dies either way. -> Meaningless.

Point Blank:: Kill Emily or let her live -> Good one.

Once Bitten: Has absolutely on influence on anything -> meaningless.

Left Behind: Good choices, directly affects if Matt or Jessica or both die -> Fine.

Important Discovery: Important for Josh's true ending. Would be better if you requiered more than one clue, but well. Guess it is ok. Also there is the whole chase scene in the sanatorium with Mike and the Wendigos. There are a lot of decisions and quick time events but nearly all of them have no impact. For example: There are a lot of situation where Wendigos jump scare Mike by attacking him from cells or while they are on a leash. He still have the choice to shot them, but it has no impact if he actually does it. Same goes for choing direction: If you take the right door instead of the left one, you will simply shoot a wendigo and turn around, taking the left one. You know what would have been really cool here? A limited number of bullets. Because near the end of the scene Mike has to shoot open a door to escape and also at least two barrels. But what would happen if your decision was to waste bullets on the three or four wendigo attacks a few minutes were you didn't have to? Right, the door would not open. You could not destroy the barrels. EVERYTHING WOULD BE DIFFERENT. Oh, and Mike would die of course. But Mike can not die at this point of the game at all. So even if you fail everything, the worst that could happen is that the poor wolf dies. We do not want this of course, but having Mike AND the wolf in danger would add a lot more drama. There could have been so much more important choices, but they did not implement it, which makes me quite sad, since the story is basically always the same.

There are already ways and expertise wo make this better. As an example please have a look at the Zero Escape Series on the Nintendo (3)DS. While both of the games may not be the kind of games you like (they are drawn in manga/anime style and a lot people don't like that) let me tell you about decision making in the second one (Virtue's last Reward) (small spoilers, only gameplay related, not story related): The decision you make are basically the same most of the time. You are kept hostage in a big facility together with some other people. Your goal is to escape of course. For that you need to solve different riddles and make your war from room to room (think something like SAW, just a lot less brutal in most cases and without that much gore). After some time your kidnapper contacts you and tells everyone that at certain points in time you have to play a game or a vessel that was places on the arm of all people will kill them with poison. Each of those vessels also has a counter on it, showing the number 5. The people get seperated in small groups of one or two people. Now each of this groups is told that they will have to play again of the other groups. All of those groups will enter a different small room. In that room they will have a computer terminal that lets the group chose between two options "Ally" or "Betrayel". If both groups that are paired agains each other chose "Alley", all members of this groups will get 2 points added to their counter. If one group choses "Betray" and the other choses "Ally", all people in the group that chose "betray" will get 3 points and everyone that chose "Ally" will LOSE 3 points. If both groups chose "Betrayel", nothing will happen. The first person to reach 10 points is free to leave. If there are multiple people that reach 10 points for the first time at the same time, all these people are free to go. Everyone else is going to die. Also, if your counter reaches 0, you are also going to die. There are multiple rounds of this game throughout the game and it will continue as long as nobody reached 10 points. As you can see, it would only be necessary to play 3 rounds with everyone chosing "Ally" and everyone would be able to leave. But as you can image, this is not as easy as it seems. Why? Because the relationship of the characters actually matters. The only real choices you make all the time (besides solving puzzles) is only if you chose "Betray" or "Ally". But these choices are so meaningful and often unpredictable that you really care for them, even on the fifth or sixth playthrough. And you need that many playthrough because there a different timelines involved and you need clues you find in timeline A to make progress in timeline B and so on. Every character can die at all times, every choice is important and this is much better solved than in Until Dawn. I am not saying those two games perfect, but perhaps Supermassive Games should have a look at them to see, what "meaningful choices" actually means.

But back to the main topic: I really love games where the choices matter. And I mean REALLY matter. While it was really great the first time in Until Dawn, it was not perfect.

999 and Virtues Last Reward did it much better and I am very happy that there will be an ending to that series.

Another game that should be mentioned is Life is Strange. While it is not finished yet and we can not say for sure how big the influence of all choices is, a decision chain could lead to a potentially complete different game which changes the whole mood of the world. If the final episode ties all lose ends together and shows that your choices in the past really mattered, this will be very awesome.

Also I am playing The Witcher 3 atm. I am not that far in the main story I think but there already were a few choices that drastically affected the game and the story so far:

Spoiler

E.g. I freed the Pesta, leading to the break out of a plague and I also freed the children in the swamp, leading to the death of the baroness and the suicide of the baron

My current project also features heavy on choices. Of course it was inspired by games like the ones I mentioned above. If you like to, you can check out the first entry in my blog about it.

 

[Kitsou]

Weighted choices are a good choice (heh) for rpgs.

It is, however, common practice to use convexities of decision trees.

As an example: You have a game with different chapters and in each chapter you can have meaningful decisions, that can chance the way you play through the chapter. But all those decisions don't matter at the start of the next chapter. This way you can give some good choices but it isn't too much work to realize all possibilites.

 

[Accendor]

You have a game with different chapters and in each chapter you can have meaningful decisions, that can chance the way you play through the chapter. But all those decisions don't matter at the start of the next chapter.

The question is: How can a decision be meaningful, if it does not matter at the start of the next chapter? Do you perhaps have an example for that?

 

[Kitsou]

The question is: How can a decision be meaningful, if it does not matter at the start of the next chapter? Do you perhaps have an example for that?

The way you play through one chapter. You decide if you want to go the right or the left way, play stealthy or charge into all enemies, learn more about the backstory or not.

Of course those decisions split up again and it gives the player the feeling ,that he can play the game closer to his gameplay style. And it also adds some replayability value, because you might want to do different decisions next time. Just for the heck of it or achievements, you only get by playing one specific way.

Sure, there should still be long-term effects like the usual progression stuff, but just because it doesn't add anything to your character or inventory, it doesn't mean, that the player can't have more fun with it.

 

[Tai_MT]

@Kitsou

That's kind of the problem I had with Deus Ex Human Revolution.  Don't get me wrong, I loved every second of gameplay in that game, save for a few oddball glitches and the ending bits where everyone is crazy and you're attempting a Pacifist playthrough.

The problem with the game is that it delights in presenting you all these choices and the possibility of consequences, but there really aren't any choices or truly interesting consequences.  There's an achievement for every decision, so you make one decision, get the achievement, reload, do the one you wanted instead.  There are even a lot of "sub optimal" decisions in the game.  The optimal path (path with the most XP, most loot, most backstory) is the path of absolute stealth.  All upgrades to your character that don't help you with stealth or with hacking are sub-optimal and actually detrimental to any kind of playthrough.  Likewise, some of the story decisions are sub-optimal.  There are ones where you get a Praxis Kit (free level up) if you do the quest a certain way...  But, if you do it the other way, you get nothing except some meager XP for the quest completion and maybe the satisfaction of knowing you're a "good guy" at the end of it (which doesn't really factor in... as it's really only deaths you personally cause that seem to matter).

Most of the major choices in that game just boil down to "do I want more story?".  If "yes", you go stealth, kill as few people as possible, hack everything possible, take every convoluted shortcut possible, and need to pull up a guide to get all the right decisions to help maximize your character to get to all the content.  If your choice is "no", then just take all the character building stuff and set it up for being armored and being good with guns, and just kill everyone on sight.  Choices at such a point are thus irrelevant, and you won't be presented with much story as everyone who gives it to you will be killed by you instead.  In many cases, there isn't an option to get most or all of the story if you go full kill crazy.
 

So, the choice really isn't much of a choice.  Most everything is locked off behind the choice of "play stealth".  As such, replayability ceases to exist.  You saw all the content the first time through when you played the way the developers wanted you to play.  There's no reason to play it again from a different way of playing, since your choices won't matter if you play differently than stealth.  Likewise, why would you ever pick any choice that deliberately makes the game harder to play and even harder to win on subsequent plays of the game?  Self-imposed challenge?  That group of people who enjoy such things is fairly small in number.

If we're going to be offered choices, then they need to matter in some way.  Each choice needs to be equal.  There should be no "optimal" and "sub-optimal" choices in the game.  Even bad endings fall into "sub-optimal" because they are essentially the game developers rubbing your nose in all the terrible things you've done and calling you a bad human being for doing those things.  Those kinds of choices almost don't need to exist, because of how very little they're tread due to the whole "developer rubbing your face in it" the whole game instead of maybe making it a different enough playthrough that you could feel awesome and even justified for that kind of playthrough.  Case in point, Mass Effect 1 (Mass Effect 2 and 3 royally screwed this system up, so we're sticking with 1).  Mass Effect 1 had a "morality meter" that wasn't really about morality.  It was simply how you got things done.  No right answer, no wrong answer, just how you did things.  A renegade was simply more likely to shoot first and ask questions later than a paragon was.  A paragon would be willing to negotiate with terrorists and try to talk them down while a Renegade would go in guns blazing and maybe nobody but the badguys would go down.  No matter what you did, you were saving the galaxy and making it a better place.  A renegade playthrough felt as good and fun as a paragon playthrough.  Later installments boiled this down to "baby eating" versus "farts rainbows", and kind of lost the joy that could've been found there.

Decisions should be meaningful if you can make them such.  Every choice should be valid and enough of a difference that it doesn't feel like a false choice.  If I punch a reporter, I want to feel like I was justified in doing so.  If I don't punch her, I want to feel justified in keeping my cool.  One of those choices should not be "wrong", unless you only want players playing your game in one particular way.  And, if everyone is going to make all of the same decisions...  What was the point of even HAVING the decisions in the first place?

 

[hian]

It really depends on how well the various plot variations are written.


If you're going to make a game where every choice branches off in a way that truly matter, then


at least the plot should be written as if each of the branching story-lines could be canon in a sense I.E


if the branches you make just feel like roads to another fail-state, then why even bother?


Sure, you could have a branch in an RPG where the hero just drops his or her quest from the get go,


but how does this really add to the game, or the story?


It doesn't do much if anything for the game-play, and that ending isn't going to offer anything that


most players would consider satisfactory in terms of the story either, so why even bother going through the trouble?


So yeah, it's a novelty that some people might opt to do for laughs just once or twice, but if you've


written your game in a way that only one path truly feels like "the right path" I.E "the way the story should end",


then the paths are more or less redundant because nobody is going to feel like they completed the game or gained


anything of value by picking them and just go back to revise their choices feeling like they've lost or wasted time.