[Link] Writing Tips

[Reynard Frost]

Pardon the double post, bumping this so newer members can have a read.

 

[SolarGale]

@Reynard

Man, for some reason the link in your first post doesn't work for me, all I see is a white page (wtf?)

It's a shame because reading the discussion it seemed like an interesting article, is this happening to anyone else?

 

[Reynard Frost]

@Reynard

Man, for some reason the link in your first post doesn't work for me, all I see is a white page (wtf?)

It's a shame because reading the discussion it seemed like an interesting article, is this happening to anyone else?

It shows up fine for me using Chrome. Try clearing your cache or refreshing the page?

 

[SolarGale]

@RF

Aha! it works now, I was using chrome and did try everything you said previously but nothing happened... although now that i click on it again it worked, so thanks anyway, i guess some things solve themselves. :3

 

[Kaelan]

I kind of agree with Grem on this, even from the perspective of a video game. This is more related to Game Design than writing, but I'm really really annoyed by gameplay mechanics that rely on randomness, in which you can be screwed over by bad luck with the RNG. It's fine if there's an appearance of randomness, but it shouldn't actually be completely random - you should always make sure you avoid the worst case scenario, or have some kind of failsafe against the really annoying situations.

One of my favorite examples is some of the quests in WoW which require you getting X many drops from Y monster. It's stated to be a certain % drop rate, but inside the game code, it will actually force a drop if you go through a certain number of kills without getting anything. I've also heard of other games doing similar things, where each time you don't get a particular drop, the rate increases until you get it; at which point it returns to normal. So you're never in that situation of "getting a bad roll" 20 times in a row.

 

[Reynard Frost]

I kind of agree with Grem on this, even from the perspective of a video game. This is more related to Game Design than writing, but I'm really really annoyed by gameplay mechanics that rely on randomness, in which you can be screwed over by bad luck with the RNG. It's fine if there's an appearance of randomness, but it shouldn't actually be completely random - you should always make sure you avoid the worst case scenario, or have some kind of failsafe against the really annoying situations.

One of my favorite examples is some of the quests in WoW which require you getting X many drops from Y monster. It's stated to be a certain % drop rate, but inside the game code, it will actually force a drop if you go through a certain number of kills without getting anything. I've also heard of other games doing similar things, where each time you don't get a particular drop, the rate increases until you get it; at which point it returns to normal. So you're never in that situation of "getting a bad roll" 20 times in a row.

Well it's not so much about randomness as it is about not walking the player by the hand and instead making them figure things out on their own. I agree that if the player is suffering due to low dice rolls, that some alterations should be made, but don't ignore the player making a bad decision. Let them know they screwed up and react accordingly.