Importance and permanence of choices in games

[danzibr]

Another of my random questions. Actually, two this time.

Do you like games that take you for a ride, or where your choices are important and/or permanent?

For example, in some games if you make the wrong choice/lose a key battle, the game goes on but you permanently lose one of your characters. Like Heavy Rain, Suikoden, some Fire Emblem games.

In many games when you distribute stats/skills/whatever, there's no going back. In fact, I can't think of many where you can easily redo all of your stats (in WoW you can change talent tree stuff). In 3.5 there are retraining rules.

For me, I like it when things go south when I perform poorly. I like it when characters die for good. I think death is taken too lightly in lots of games... like if you're on a quest to save the world or whatever, I hope there'd be some real danger involved. I also like it when the things I do are permanent.

[Zevox]

Another of my random questions. Actually, two this time.

Do you like games that take you for a ride, or where your choices are important and/or permanent?
Can't resist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPjjnfGKrPc).

Though yeah, that's my answer. A good, fun ride, in terms of gameplay, story, or in the best cases both, is what I want out of games. Choices aren't important, and can even be detrimental to that.

For what it's worth, I don't consider perma-death in Fire Emblem to really count for the latter, either. Only the characters that aren't important to the plot are allowed to die that way anyway - the important ones cause a game over when they die. And really, who lets characters die when playing Fire Emblem anyway?

[factotum]

I'm kind of on the fence here. I'm perfectly happy for a game to contain choices that are important and/or have a permanent effect, but I'm not OK if the results of those choices make the game unwinnable with no way for the player to tell that's what will happen. I remember when playing Morrowind--there were certain NPCs who were vital to the progression of the main quest, and if you were to (accidentally or otherwise) kill one of those the game would immediately pop up a message saying effectively "You just broke the game, are you sure you want to keep playing or would you rather reload from your last save?". I can get behind that, because you're likely to only lose an hour or two of play at most. If the game didn't tell you that, and you got another 20-30 hours in before realising you're SOL, I would be...rather displeased.

[The Hellbug]

And really, who lets characters die when playing Fire Emblem anyway?

This guy! I played Awakening on hard the first time through and didn't expect FE6-level difficulty at times. There were points in the game where I didn't have enough characters to fill a whole team!

In my opinion, there's a time and place for both, though I actually break it down a little more than you do.

For example, I really enjoy playing games like Fire Emblem or X-Com (on ironman) or most rogue-likes where there is a degree of randomness that can just beat you. A good portion of the fun for me is watching the world fall apart around me while trying to tape it back together long enough to make it the end. Living with the consequences of your mistakes (or just bad luck) and adapting to them is what makes those kinds of games fun for me.

I actually think that it is fairly important to differentiate your two questions, though, because the games I mentioned above are very different from RPGs where choices you make can change the way the story goes (and often give your decisions a larger mechanical effect on how you play the game.) Mass effect is my classic example for the other camp: a game where you can kinda change the way things happen, but it doesn't terribly impact the game-play. In this case, when it comes down to it, I'd almost prefer to just be along for the ride because it tends to lead to a more focused, fulfilling experience (which, funnily enough, is kind of the way I ended up seeing Mass Effect since your decisions tended to only change the tone of the game, not the plot so much).

[Knaight]

While I'd consider both of these to be broadly applicable design decisions (as opposed to something like being able to lose the game due to a choice and only find out hours later, which is almost inevitably a mistake), I tend to personally favor a more narrative less-choice based design the longer the game is. In the context of scenarios that are a few hours at most, bring on the decision making. In the context of some 30 hour game, I favor having fewer permanent choices that influence the rest of the game.

[sana]

I love permanent choices that have real consequence that I just didn't see coming.

Example of perfect in my opinion:
Kill the tree spirit or set it free, you don't know what the "right" decision is. Hours later I found out that by setting it free and saving the orphans I not only condemned a whole town to death but also the Barons wife. By the time you find this out you're probably so far further in the game that you won't roll back and just keep going. Witcher 3 does this a couple of times and at some point you're decisions become natural and you just stick with them.

What I can't stand however are oh lol you loose because you didn't reload that save things. I hate when that happens.
What I find stupid is pick option A or B immediately see resolution and know it was a bad/good choice. Bioware often does this, you can just smell the hmm wrong option I guess he shouldn't die here.


On stats skills it's a yes and no. I hate it if it's just respec all the time. I do like a maybe expensive respec to fix some early day mistakes.
example of bad: Dragon age Inquisition respec is a cheap constant toy.
example of good: Skyrim redistribute skill points requires Defeating Miraak and paying a dragon soul OR making a skill legendary and thus reseting it to crappy.

[HandofShadows]

Would you kindly consider that these are a little bit apples and oranges? A Constants game and a Variable game are very different in most ways. The way I judge them is if they are good games.

[danzibr]

Thanks for the responses all!

And even if they can be considered apples and oranges, personally I prefer oranges.

[Aotrs Commander]

I do not like having to redo things.

I don't play games for the purposes of a beating a challenge - I simply don't find that gives me any form of satisfaction. I play ultimately for a story (or to Make A Thing in the case of city builders or something or Kill Stuff While Laughing (if 4X/Civ game)) and to see pretty much all the content (usually in a single playthrough since very few games actually end up being placed more than once). So if (avoidable) permenant character death is a Thing that can happen, unless I specifically intend to get that character killed (usually something for the rare subsequent playthrough), I will tend to simply reload and try things differently. (I also reload a LOT on games that have random events.)

Course-of-story altering choices are fine, but I can do without them (TIE Fighter and Dunkeon Keeper 2/3 of Best Games of All Time had neither, and the other third of The Trio, PS: Torment didn't have a great deal, either). What I do dislike is having to make a choice with no idea of the criterion (a favorite of some of the FF games, which merely causes me to go and read a wlaktrhough). In fact, if presented with a game-altering choice, I am usually inclined to save, see what the results are (or look on walkthrough if they are not immediately obvious).

(As one can probably gather, I don't multiplayer. If I want to play a human, I play table top and even then noncompetative-mindsettedly.)


Respec-wise, it kind of varies. If I am given all availble information at the start, then I'm more inclined to plan ahaead and so not worry about not being able to retrain or whatever. Having the option is nice, though I tend to find I don't use it that ofern anyway, due to aforementioned planning.