Win Every Battle

[Wavelength]

In nearly every RPG ever made, the expectation is for the player to win every battle.  Sometimes by virtue of the game's difficulty (or poor player planning or a lack of clarity) the player will lose a battle, at which point the player will be brought to the load screen or the last safe place they visited and essentially be told "do that last part again" - until they win.  When you have to "do it again" more than once, it tends to feel unsatisfying and frustrating.


Even if the player does lose a battle, the game treats the defeat and anything leading up to it as if it never happened.  The "narrative" driven into the player's head is that the party defeated every challenge that came in front of them, and that failure at any point was not supposed to happen.


Meanwhile, if combat is supposed to be an engaging activity, it needs to be tuned around presenting the possibility of failure.  The enemies need to be strong enough to threaten players that don't play the combat out well, and the outcome needs to be unclear at the start of the fight - not delivering on this means that combat will be much less exciting at best and feel like a complete chore at worst.  Make the analogy to any competitive game like Chess, League of Legends, Football, or Pox Nora - these games are much more enjoyable when the outcome is still unclear during play.


I feel like there's an inherent contradiction between these two concepts, which could only be resolved by somehow making it okay to lose almost any battle in the game and have the player continue to progress in spite of losing - hopefully with some consequence for having lost the battle (in order to make the player care about winning it), but without a consequence that makes the player feel like they did something bad (imagine if Hearthstone made you feel bad every time you lost a match) or encourages save scumming.  Completing the game with 250 hard-fought victories and 50 defeats, I think, would feel a lot better than completing it with 300 victories and 5 game overs along the way.  In other words, I feel that...


It needs to be okay to fail.  But how can we go about implementing that in an RPG with a narrative?


(As side notes: this topic intentionally ignores clearly unwinnable battles which are meant as story devices rather than actual combat, and also focuses on video game RPGs, as opposed to tabletop/P&P RPGs where this expectation is often not in place - maybe we can draw some inspiration from tabletop roleplaying?)

 

[Victor Sant]

Considering that most of the time the player is figthing for his life, defeat means death.


I don't see a issue with the game returning a 'Game Over' when the player is defeated.


I don't think this fit the theme, and if you look on any of the examples of you gave, all of them are about competition. Traditional single player RPGs aren't about competing with someone else.


'It's ok to fail' only when your 'life' (in rpg games, the character's life) is not at the stake.

 

[JayTheDaniels]

First thing that comes to mind for me is the concept of permanent unit deaths. How exactly one would implement that into an RPG with a narrative is entirely up to the designer, but the example I have in my head is having a primary cast of major characters but making the fights too difficult to beat with them alone requiring the player to acquire "mercenaries" or "sellswords" that the player gets more and more attached to. This way, the punishment of failing combat is the death of your loyal follower and the need to acquire a replacement to adequately continue. Think of a sort of XCOM system.


Otherwise, a far simpler answer is a sort of "knockout" like Pokemon and have the player try again. Can keep track of number of loses in a variable and make more hardcore players strive for fewer or no defeats.

 

[Rinobi]

Whether or not it's okay to fail is dependent upon the consequences. You lose a card game... your win/loss ratio suffers. You lose in a battle against a grotesque monster... you die (usually). Of course, there's a contradiction; the narrative itself is the contradiction. The problem with the RPG narrative is that the penalty for the player failing to successfully complete the challenge that makes up the gameplay loop is death. If not death, then it is some irreversible consequence like a failure to accomplish something that's important in continuing the narrative. If a developer wants failure to be less punishing, then they need to seriously consider the elements of their gameplay loop.


Generally, the goal of a role-playing adventure game is to entertain its audience with the journey of the protagonist. A game-over punishes the player by disallowing the continuation of said journey. Generally, the goal of a competitive game is to entertain its players with the challenge, and the sense of accomplishment when overcoming said challenge. A 'loss' is an adequate reminder of having failed said challenge.


If you wish to have a game incorporate both of these elements, the narrative has to allow for it.

 

[Tai_MT]

Okay, I like the core concept here and the problem laid out within.  However...  I don't think it can ever work the way you're thinking it might eventually if we can just come up with a magic means to do it.


Here's the main problem:  Players.


If losing a battle results in too much of a negative consequence (lost XP, lost money, lost items, etcetera), then you're telling the player to Savescum.  That's what I do in every game where death has a consequence like that.  Pokémon takes half my money if I lose a fight?  Savescum before each battle and before challenging the Elite Four.  Stardew Valley removes most of my items and a good chunk of money everytime I die in a dungeon?  Revert to previous save at the beginning of the day.


On the opposite end of that spectrum, if there are virtually no negative consequences for dying, then the game feels too easy and without threat.  Take Fable 2 and Fable 3 for the example.  What happens when you die?  You get back up and get a scar.  A scar which does little to you except affect appearance.  Which, can be entirely negated should you have enough renown... and which actually doesn't matter at all to the game as you only need appearance points for getting a wife... and even that can be gotten around by just spamming enough gifts.  So, when you die... it's like 10 seconds of a death and then revive animation, and you're back in the fray to keep fighting away.  So, even if you completely suck, you will still win.


So, here's your proper conundrum, should you choose to accept it:  When players savescum to prevent death penalties or ignore death penalties entirely because they're not penalizing at all...  How could you ever really change how the player plays the game?  Games like Rogue-likes aren't that popular (or are also savescummed!) because of the "permanent death" aspect of the games (nobody likes to lose progress at all) while other games with no penalty for death are viewed as children's games... or "too easy".
 


Personally, I just prefer the standard game-over screen.  If I screwed up, slap me with a "game over", plop me at my last save point, and let me try again.  I might get annoyed if your save point is too far from the boss fight... or there is no means to skip the cutscene after I've viewed it the umpteenth bazillion time...  But, I won't get annoyed that I lost.  Annoyance from me comes from when I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do to win.  If it's too obtuse what I'm meant to be doing (like all the late-game FFX fights... Seymoure on the mountain and Sin on the airship are two fine examples...  Sin actually caused me to QUIT PLAYING because I couldn't figure out how to beat the guy in the FOUR TURNS the game gave me to do so before his overdrive activated) and several deaths hasn't at least rewarded me with a hint...  Then I'm out.  I'm all for challenge.  I'm against unfair challenge that exists because game devs are lazy or suck at their job of communicating, at least partially in hints, what it is I'm meant to be doing.


For me, the game over screen is enough punishment.  I'd be reloading from the last save anyway if I savescummed.  Besides, how do you make a loss and then revival not a continuity black-hole?  If the heroes can never die and never lose, why is the Big Bad a threat at all?  Likewise, if some monsters or a general or something defeat them... why are they just not DEAD?  Dead characters, to maintain continuity, require you to either make those characters never be able to be revived... or need to require the dev to delete the save file and have the player start the whole game again.  Why on earth would a hungry monster leave them alive?  Why would the villain leave his enemies alive when they are literally the only people in the game world who can stop him/her/it?


The only solution I can see is just...  Make combat difficult enough that you can lose at any point due to stupid decision making, poor preparation, or lack of supplies...  And make losing result in just the game-over screen and having to load the last save.  You really don't need any stronger deterrent to losing a battle than simply being presented with "Game Over" and having to reload a previous save.  You also don't need to have some kind of method so that you can just keep fighting even if you lose (this cheapens combat entirely and makes it boring as well as uninteresting.  If there's no danger, there's no reason to do anything except keep hammering away until you win).


The game over screen.  You reach it when you lose.  You lose if you aren't doing the things you're supposed to be doing in the game.  You win if you're doing everything right.  A game-over screen is meant to teach the player what they did was wrong and to try something new.  Or, maybe they learned something, but it wasn't enough to win.  That's all the game-over screen accomplishes and that's all it really needs to accomplish.


I'd say if a player feels sad or hurt or something at a game-over screen... they're simply too sensitive and have never been taught that "failure is a learning experience".  Failure is only permanent if you decide to stop getting up after being knocked down.  Otherwise, it's little more than a temporary setback that makes the player smarter in the long run.


Let me just give you my personal example here.  Keep in mind, I come from a different generation of gamers.  Zelda II.  Also known as Link.  It's for the NES.  I beat that game.  Legit.  Without savestates, emulators, etcetera.  I beat it on the original NES.  It was the most trying game I have ever completed, but each game over just made me angrier and more determined to win.  I made maps of every dungeon I was in.  I went out of my way to level up for extra lives and maximum power.  I wrestled with frustrating controls and cryptic clues.  I beat that game.  I racked up over 1000 continues (it doesn't register individual deaths, only amount of times you continue, if I remember correctly).  At 3 lives a continue (default, unless you find more), that's a whopping 3000 deaths to beat what amounts to about a 5 hour game.  Every continue I learned something new.  I made maps on the overworld to get through mazes and record where I'd found things for later.  I learned how to beat bosses, I found all the spells, and I found quick ways around and easy wins against enemies after they'd killed me enough.


Seeing "Game Over" did not discourage me.  It empowered me.  The game could only beat me if I stopped trying.  Some games have beaten me.  I can admit that.  But some games... oh, they employed just the right amount of teaching between each death and each continue that a death didn't feel cheap.  It felt like I was closer to winning.  It felt like a new chance to try something else.  A chance to be more clever.  A chance to gain more skill.  A chance to win this time!


So, my vote is just a simple "Game Over" screen.  You need nothing more and nothing less.  People who can't handle seeing Game Over will only play games in which they can never lose... and people who can handle seeing it, will be empowered by it.  At least... they will be if your game is designed in such a way as to feel like each loss is a learning experience and not cheap.

 

[hadecynn]

Meanwhile, if combat is supposed to be an engaging activity, it needs to be tuned around presenting the possibility of failure.  

I don't think this assumption is true. 


In competitive human vs. human games, yes, having unpredictable results certainly adds to the excitement of the match. However, not all games fall into this category, and I would argue that narrative-based RPGs do not.


I would even go further to say that at its core, RPG battles are essentially math puzzle games (of various levels of complexity) coated drenched in really really awesome paint. If you think about it, most battles can be summed up as, "given rate Z at which my total HP X is being depleted, how can I arrange/order all my variables C1 ~ Cn (all the commands available to the player) in such a way that I can deplete the opponent's total HP Y such that Y becomes 0 before X does?" This is not a question that asks you what the answer is; this is a question that asks you how to get to a known answer.


In which case, the "engagement" aspect of RPG battles should be shifted from focusing on the destination to focusing on the journey. That is, did the player feel challenged throughout the process of reaching the known destination? And before any skeptics object, there are strong reasons to believe these types of games ARE engaging. Just look at how long crossword puzzles have endured, or how Sudoku puzzles took the world by storm not that long ago; these games have clear-cut, foreseeable "end-states" as well and are even less flexibilities than RPG battles. 


Furthermore, even though most if not all of us here grew up with and love traditional, narrative-based RPGs, I think its important to realize that these fond experiences that form the core of our passion are also responsible for forming a lot of boundaries and assumptions we take for granted about RPGs and how they "should be". As much as I dislike the aggressive monetization aspect of smartphone JRPGs recently, I think one creative takeaway that we can backward-integrate into traditional RPGs to make things a lot more interesting is the concept of having sub-goals/objectives beyond just "winning the battle".


For those unfamiliar, similar to how Candy Crush gives you 1 ~ 3 star rankings for your performance on every stage based on how many points you earn in that stage, smartphone JRPGs have mini-objectives (eg. defeat all foes in X number of turns, don't have anyone die in battle, etc.) that gives additional rewards when they are accomplished in battle.  Their use in smartphone games are by-and-large limited due to the small engagement loops/cycles built into games on-the-go, but what if you take this idea to the traditional narrative RPG and expand on it?


So, taking the idea of "defeat enemies in X turns" further, imagine if, in a cave-like dungeon, there are mid-bosses along the way that, if not killed by X turns, will use the special attack "Earthquake" that not only have in-battle effects, but also persists outside of the battle. That is, upon exiting the battle and returning to the map screen, the player will see that Earthquake caused the path that was originally in front of them to collapse, but at the same time opened up a new path somewhere that the player will now need to backtrack to find as "punishment" for "not doing as well as they should".


Or let's raise the stakes even higher. The player is facing off against the big bad to stop them from dropping a meteor on the planet, battle ensues. In the battle, if the player takes too long and "loses" the time-objective, then after defeating the big bad, the player finds out that they were too late to stop the meteor coming into orbit, and now unlocks a new scenario where they find out that the meteor was actually a vessel sealing an ancient dragon that they now need to defeat. On the other hand, if the player is able to defeat the big bad within the time-objective, after exiting the battle scene, the big bad decides to use their magic power to save themselves instead of calling the meteor, and transforms into Super Big Bad that the player now has to fight; there will be no ancient dragon in this case.


Both examples above basically borrows the ideas of "mini-objective" and "multiple branching scenarios" and combines them into one. However, the difference between this and most "multiple story/ending" systems is that the story branch is determined not through simple dialog choices, but rather actual player skill/performance. I think this tighter integration also aligns the RPG game experience better; unless the core mechanic of your game IS just manually selecting different dialog choices when they come up (visual novels).


Ultimately, I'm sure there are tons of other interesting combinations that can be made, but in reference to your original dilemma, I think a viable approach that can make a game that "expects the player to win every battle", but also "presents the possibility of failure" would be to create battles with more than just one single goal.  

 

[KoldBlood]

From a Game Mechanic perspective, I could see this being an interesting way of handling battles in a game where battles are not a life or death experience like a dojo spar or a non-lethal tournament for instance. Used in this way you could tell the story of, say, a rising fighter who has to beat different challengers. No single lost battle would be an immediate game over but who you beat and didn't beat could affect the story and/or the character. This would be the perfect opportunity for a branching story line with multiple endings.


In a traditional RPG on the other hand, where 99% of battles are a life or death matter, it'd be really hard to explain that away as others have said before me.


When it comes to Game Overs in general I have to side with @Tai_MT on this one. Maybe it's due to being an old school gamer but when I got a Game Over I just sucked it up, put on my try hard pants, and tried to do better the next time! Sure, I'd get frustrated sometimes but the feeling of accomplishment when you finally did beat it was second to none! Again maybe it's just the generation of Gamers I come from but still it bugs me that both Gamers and Game Developers seem to have this new idea now that losing is bad game design and winning should be by default and I have no idea where that concept came from.


In short, It's like playing a sport and winning a trophy and then the losing team getting the same trophy for "trying". To me that defeats the purpose.


Just my personal opinion mind you.

 

[LaFlibuste]

I'd like to start with this statement:


Gameplay > Setting



A lot of people have countered the proposal with "if you lose, the monsters eat you, you die". This is a "setting" argument. Setting and game logic can be altered in any way to make the game coherent if it supports a strong and enjoyable gameplay features. With the case at hand, it could easily be something along the lines of "The characters are some kind of spirits / protected by some kind of spirits evaporate or something before death and can be regenerated at the cost of whatever". There, problem solved, the monsters won't eat the characters. And i'm sure someone creative enough might come up with dozen other ideas to go around this problem.


Now I'd like to state my total agreement with this:

Here's the main problem:  Players.


If losing a battle results in too much of a negative consequence (lost XP, lost money, lost items, etcetera), then you're telling the player to Savescum.  That's what I do in every game where death has a consequence like that.  Pokémon takes half my money if I lose a fight?  Savescum before each battle and before challenging the Elite Four.  Stardew Valley removes most of my items and a good chunk of money everytime I die in a dungeon?  Revert to previous save at the beginning of the day.


On the opposite end of that spectrum, if there are virtually no negative consequences for dying, then the game feels too easy and without threat.  Take Fable 2 and Fable 3 for the example.  What happens when you die?  You get back up and get a scar.  A scar which does little to you except affect appearance.  Which, can be entirely negated should you have enough renown... and which actually doesn't matter at all to the game as you only need appearance points for getting a wife... and even that can be gotten around by just spamming enough gifts.  So, when you die... it's like 10 seconds of a death and then revive animation, and you're back in the fray to keep fighting away.  So, even if you completely suck, you will still win.

Finding the right balance is very hard. Loosing XP/money/loot is not cool and a lot of players will self-game over themselves to avoid it. I'd probably do. Maybe you wouldn't, who knows. Here are a few ideas:


- Have players lose whatever when they die, they still have the option to self-game over, their choice.


- One of your main issues seems to be with going back to the save point and redoing part of the dungeon; you could give players the option to just retry a battle they lost in the state they were upon starting it the first time. It's still a loop, albeit a much shorter one. (Reference: FF Mystic Quest)


- If we are into choices, you could give the players multiple choices upon "dying": respawn at save point (game over), retry battle, survive battle at the cost of whatever (X money, maybe paid for in an arrangement of currency and abandonned loot chosen by the player, Y amount of XP, whatever else), maybe even retry battle with various buffs selected by the player, at the cost of whatever (paid upfront or reduced rewards).

A few things to consider, though:


- Important story-related boss fights (or any boss fights if you are willing) should not be skippable by failing them. At best, you should just respawn right before the boss fight. Because even though gameplay > setting, if you lost to some bad guy who let you go it'll be very weird when the story assumes you defeated him later on. Also, they kinda are progression markers of sorts.


- The retry battle thing can be nice, but sometimes (especially with bosses) you will simply be too weak or too ill-prepared to ever be able to succeed. So beware trapping the players in unwinnable loops. The game over/back to save point mechanic was maybe tiresome but at least gave you room to prepare better.


- Some challenges are more fun if the outcome is unclear ahead of time, but if this is going to be the case for every fight, you better not have a random encounter every 5 steps or your game will become very tiresome very quickly. Either save this design philosophy for bosses or consider having a handful of pre-determined battles per dungeon only.


- If you are going to have your players pay whatever for loosing battles, mind the fact that players might weaken over time, making them unable to beat bosses (but maybe skipping them anyway) and zoom through the whole game failing. It's like failing students in schools: sometimes maybe they could still catch up if you allow them to continue to the next level, but over the long run they will lag behind more and more until there just ain't no way they can succeed at anything at all. So you'd have to give players a way to stock on whatever they loose in fight endlessly (like unlimited random battles to amass EXP and the possibility to go back to easier zones, which somewhat goes against my previous point).

So to sum up, I think a system where you loose whatever when you fail battles instead of having a game over could work if:


- The challenging part of battle was reserved for bosses and/or there was at least a few respawning, easier fights to allow players to amass EXP or whatever they are lacking;


- Even if you fail bosses, you can't skip them. Maybe you won't be sent back in time to the ave point, but the story won't progress until you have beaten that fight.

 

[Tai_MT]

I just have one question...  If your characters are spirits...  and thus monsters won't eat them...  What point is there in monsters that attack them at all?  Would a monster not simply ignore them since they are A.  Immortal and unkillable.  And B.  Not a source of threat or food?


I ask this question because in my own game, you play as a dead hero who is traversing through the land of the dead to decide his fate.  If the party falls in battle, their souls are simply destroyed as is the nature of the environment and setting they're in.  The problem I kept running across was, "Okay, if this world exists where you're playing as a spirit...  Why would ANYTHING except the big bad ever attack you?  Except to kill you?  Except to destroy you?  There is literally no other reason for monsters and people to attack you otherwise".

If you run the FFX plotline where the creatures are all just malevolent spirits...  Well, they want you dead too.  Because they're malevolent spirits whose only drive is to murder you.  They don't eat.  They don't make nests.  They don't find mates.  They exist because they're collections of rogue spirits who only have the drive to murder anything that is alive out of jealousy and spite.

Honestly, I just can't see a believable setting in which monsters and people don't kill you when you lose a fight in a standard RPG plotline (save the world, beat the badguy, etcetera).  I could see it working in something like the "I'm a fighter, climbing the ladder!" type of game world, where death is basically something that doesn't even happen to your enemies, because it's not part of the story.  But, in a world full of dangerous monsters and military forces where you're taking center stage?  I cannot imagine that ever ending in anything like, "oh, you didn't die, 'cause you're kind of sort of immortal-ish, and you just get to retry".  Well, once the monsters know they can NEVER beat you... why would they EVER attack you?  Wouldn't they just ignore you entirely?


What purpose does a boss have in defeating you if you don't actually die and aren't actually stopped in that kind of setting/story?  "Dude, I just defeated you 3 times, you resurrected all 3 times...  Obviously you're just going to keep coming back until you win.  Why am I wasting my time?  I'm going to go date your mom and get a beer.  Have fun with the guy ruling the world."

I mean, to me, it's a bit silly.  But, that's my two cents on it.

 

[kovak]

Acctually it could be a good thing in a game to reflect you grow, monster avoiding you cuz you're stronger than them,


Events should ofc change if you face the same enemy he'd think "not this **** again, bro" and fricking leave or change how the path is handled.


I think that'd be interesting if monsters behave like players as well.

 

[LaFlibuste]

I just have one question...  If your characters are spirits...  and thus monsters won't eat them...  What point is there in monsters that attack them at all?  Would a monster not simply ignore them since they are A.  Immortal and unkillable.  And B.  Not a source of threat or food?

Who says they are not a threat? Maybe you attacked them first. Maybe your presence makes them uneasy on any kind of level, disrupts their territory or traditionnal food source or whatever. Maybe (part?) of whatever it costs you to respawn is funneled towards them and you ARE indeed a source of food or whatever, just not directly through your body. Maybe they even get to keep your body but the spirit thing allows you to materialize anew, at the cost of whatever. And tons more other reasons. And were just talking a "traditional" high fantasy setting with spirits. Maybe it's computer simulation or whatever and you are an algorhythm? Maybe whatever else. There are some pretty clever and original ideas out there.

In that regard, save points are no more logical, but we overlook the obvious flaws because it works gameplay-wise (and we grew used to them).

All of this to say, gameplay trumps setting. If you have a strong gameplay element that seems like tons of fun, there is ALWAYS a way to justify it and make it coherent with your setting if you are creative and open-minded enough. If the setting is coherent and the gameplay element is good enough, players will take the leap and accept it.

 

[jonthefox]

for me the problem is a thematic one--if battles don't actually represent combat as "fighting to the death," then what does?   A game could very well decide to have battles just represent the part of the fighting before one decides to yield or succumb, but then this would have to be consistent throughout the game--and maybe the enemies decide whether to "finish you off" or let you live to fight another day based on their personality traits and/or choices in dialogue that the player has made.  This could be cool and interesting.   


More generally, I have a scene planned fairly early on in my project where you're going to fight a battle that you can win or lose; you don't get a game over if you lose, but if you win then a part of the game's plot changes in a way that is different (and perhaps more beneficial) than if you had lost.  

 

[KoldBlood]

Another good setting for this would be the story of an immortal character or group of immortal characters. They could revive after death in some sort of manner (explained by the story and at a cost of course, don't have a suggestion on that, I'm just brainstorming) and the story could revolve more around the character(s) struggles with their power (whether they view it as a gift or a curse, watching friends and loved ones die while they live on, etc.).


Another thing you could do is use this in combination with them not aging to follow their story over the course of hundreds of years. You could even start the story in a medieval setting and progress through the years into a modern setting and even into a sci-fi setting.


I could see that being a really interesting way of using the mechanic, the trick would be making deaths significant in some other way without being so much that the player just resets because at that point you may as well have died. Which will defeat the whole "immortal" concept and the point of the game play mechanic in the first place. Perhaps eliminating the traditional save system would be necessary in this situation. If you really wanted to get fancy you could even have enemies remember defeating you and react to that. You'd have to also do something about the challenge of the combat and/or make combat super engaging in some way.


I don't know, like I said I'm just brainstorming.

 

[Frozen_Phoenix]

I've played a rm2k game ages ago that when you died during random battles you would be sent to a jail or to an inn depending on the battle.


I play (a lot) a game called mount and blade. There's no game over, but if you lose a battle, the enemies will take you prisoner and you will lose some gold and items (it's a war game btw).


About the plot point (why didn't the enemies kill the hero party???), you can either work on a justification or just ignore it (like you ignore the revive skills/item not being used to revive plot kills).

 

[KoldBlood]

(like you ignore the revive skills/item not being used to revive plot kills).

Interestingly enough, this is something I addressed in my own game. It's something that always bothered me in other games. Of course, you let it go because you know it's a game but you can't help but think when a character dies in the plot "USE A (insert revive item name here)!!"


In my game I simply renamed the "Death" state "Injured" instead. Basically the character is injured to a point where they are unable to fight and require special treatment to get back in the fight. "Special Treatment" meaning a revive item of course. If everyone in the party is injured and unable to fight the player can put it together pretty easily in their head that the enemies then just finish them all off.


It's a simple name change but I think it gives the threat of death just a little bit more impact in the game and helps with the immersion.

 

[trouble time]

I don't think this assumption is true. 

It isn't true for all players, but it is true for some players, like myself. Not to mention it's kind of unavoidable if you design a game where you have to make descisions in combat (unless the enemies are pillowfisted.) As for the comparison to sudoku and crosswords, again it's something some players like and other people don't, the other thing about them is that they are actually pretty punishing if you make a mistake. Marking a wrong number then continuing the game until you realize that the puzzle is for some reason unsolveable now generally means just erasing the whole thing, even worse in a crossword since theres the possbility of misspelling or choosing a word that's the right size with the wrong meaning (but you don't know that) or worst of all, a word with the right size and right meaning,but it isn't want the puzzle wants. What I'm saying is that even in a game with a forseeable end state making a mistake leads to consequences, and the most comparable state I can think of to restarting a sudoku puzzle is death in an RPG, though granted if you're sharp you can erase mistakes as they happen and fill in the correct answer, an analog I see for that is healing in RPGs if you let your healer be powerful. I actually think the ideas in the post were pretty awesome though.


Anyway, @LaFlibuste mentioned restarting the battle, and well this is a good approach IMO. Another would be to be set back to the beginning of the room you're in (rather than the last save) and if you have visual encoutners you could decide wheter or not to respawn the enimes. Also if you have visual encounters, and you want the party to lose items, you could add a sparkle graphic or something to the enemy to let them know it has them, and then have them get all their stuff back if they kill that monster. In this case defeat would mean the party scatters and regroups. I do think that losing to a boss should either restart the battle or give you a game over though, it's okay to make the standard mooks look like they let you escape, but your boss should probably be seen as more threatening.

 

[Frozen_Phoenix]

Interestingly enough, this is something I addressed in my own game. It's something that always bothered me in other games. Of course, you let it go because you know it's a game but you can't help but think when a character dies in the plot "USE A (insert revive item name here)!!"


In my game I simply renamed the "Death" state "Injured" instead. Basically the character is injured to a point where they are unable to fight and require special treatment to get back in the fight. "Special Treatment" meaning a revive item of course. If everyone in the party is injured and unable to fight the player can put it together pretty easily in their head that the enemies then just finish them all off.


It's a simple name change but I think it gives the threat of death just a little bit more impact in the game and helps with the immersion.

Yeah that's a nice way around it.

For the topic, to justify the enemies not killing the player, it can be made so the enemies are interested in selling the party as slaves or imprisoning them (player has to pay a percentage of their gold for their freedom as punishment), or just fighting to defend themselves, but not to kill the hero's party. Or you can make them kill the party, but give some kind of afterlife option where the player can revive by sacrificing experience/gold etc.

 

[LaFlibuste]

In my game I simply renamed the "Death" state "Injured" instead. Basically the character is injured to a point where they are unable to fight and require special treatment to get back in the fight. "Special Treatment" meaning a revive item of course. If everyone in the party is injured and unable to fight the player can put it together pretty easily in their head that the enemies then just finish them all off.

Well honestly I think this is already the way it is with most classic JRPGs. I know it's true for most early FFs and a few Dragon Warrior titles, at least. It's usually some variant of "KO", "Wounded", "Passed Out" or "Faint". Players just say the characters are dead and use phoenix downs to revive them, but it's actually not what the game is telling them. The assumption being that when the whole party is knocked out, they can't defend themselves anymore and the battle is lost (and maybe THEN they will get killed). Just like in some (most? all?) titles, having the whole party paralyzed or petrified also results in defeat.

Anyway, that's a bit off topic, so I'll leave it there

 

[Tai_MT]

How come one of the options to solve the problem isn't simply "remove save points and let the player save whenever"?  Personally, I like this approach to RPGs.  I find actual save points very immersion breaking and in some cases frustrating when I've got to trek back over a bunch of already tread ground after a loss.


Instead of a room with a save point, why not a room that heals HP/MP before the boss?  That way, if the player hasn't saved in a while... their memory is jogged and they'll also remember to save as close to the boss as possible.  At least that way, a "Game Over" is only as punishing as the player had made it on themselves.


I think I remember an Extra Credits video about "Failing Faster" so that players can get back into the game much quicker without having to suffer through a losing fight for long periods of time before losing... or having to rewalk all the distance they covered to get back to where they died.


Faster failing, I think, leads to faster learning.  At that point, I'm not sure it matters what method you use to have a "reset" for a player...  Well, unless it's a player like me who just prefers a Game Over instead of the other options.  Personal preference.

 

[Manofdusk]

 I saw an anime once that handled this pretty well.


 The characters were immortal and so were the enemies. The normal people were not.


 When monsters died, they were resurrected eventually with no real memories of having died. This led to wars against the normal folk that the normal folk couldn't win. That was when the immortal "adventurers" came. Like the monsters, they resurrected when slain. However, it was eventually discovered that they lost memories when they died.


 Earthbound was another game that handled death pretty well. Your main character was resurrected on low health and the other members were still unconscious so you had to go revive them.