575 réponses à ce sujet

[In Exile]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
You assume that everyone tries their hardest during combat, and any failure will be a result of them simply being bad.  

I assume people are trying to play the game well, yes. But that doesn't seem to be a strange assumption.

The fear of loss makes the stakes higher and engages the player more. If nothing bad happens when you lose, then succeeding will have the same flavor as failure - that is to say, none. If your player is entirely disengaged from everything except only the most EXTREME forms of failure (entire party dies), then what incentive do they have to try? If they aren't trying, then how is the player not going to feel bored? On the other side, if the player is constantly trying to stay alive, who are they NOT more engaged in their party make-up, the equipment they are using, the tactics they are employing and, in general, the game?

At this point, we're just trying to draw generalized conclusions about gamer psychology without data, which I don't think is very fruitful. But let's say I agree with you. 

Even if that's true, look at how you've phrased it. "Constatly trying to stay alive". That requires more than a minimal, 1 in 100 penalty that will never lead to any measurable differnece in performance. You have to have a penalty with actual substance to change behaviour. 

Developers catering to those who would reload upon a character dying by removing death are not doing anyone any favors. The player obviously cares if they live or die, they just didnt like how extreme the penalty of doing so was. A logical answer was the injury system. But that, too, is easily games with the huge quantity of injury kits and the easy fix of a camp visit.

Taking one step back towards the realm of penalization merely increases the stakes. Increasing the stakes increases the feeling of excitement.

It depends on how you increase the stakes, but like I said, you need an actual penalty to make it work that the player buys into. All of these penalties at HP = 0 aren't functionally different from each other once your each the point where the player feels that it's a penalty, that's my point.

Like I said - let's assume I'm with you on the fact that players need the excitement. What I'm saying is that the only way to do it - to create a penalty serious enough for the player to want to avoid HP = 0, just has to have you get to a serious enough threshold, after which the consequence is irrelevant because most just weasel their way out of it. 

[Realmzmaster]

In Exile wrote...

Realmzmaster wrote...
That may be true, but my suggestion would be to have the effect occur after a period of time. So the player would have to go back to a save before receiving the initial injury to avoid it. It would be limited to hard or above modes..

No. All the player would have to do is re-load before the encounter once a character falls. Basically, if your penalty triggers on HP = 0 (permadeath, stat reduction X hrs into the future), then the actual way to avoid it is the same, which is to retry the encounter without the character reaching HP = 0. 

And if it's a nightmare only feature, then that's all the more reason to re-load rather than to wind up with a perma-nerfed party and have to restart the whole game anyway.

Fast Jimmy wrote...
Even if there was only a remote chance of it happening? I don't think it would. If only once out of 100 times a character "falls" in combat they had a chance at a permanent injury, who would reload every time?  

It depends on the sort of player. But it depends on your incentive system. If the actual stat loss is meaningless (i.e., something that counts as 1 of 3 points you get at level up and the chance is 1/100 to have it happen), then it's it's like that thing isn't even part of the game. If the chance is low but the penalty is severe, then why would it be justified to take the risk and have your character nerfed? And if the chance of injury is high but the magnitude is low, then you get back to the original incentive problem of death by 1000 cuts.

The other problem, design wise, is that you're essentially punishing players who are worse at the game. 

Th question then becomes finding the sweet spot to make it sting enough to instill fear (and, hence, better management during combat) but not be so annoying a player feels the need to reload every time a character drops. 

What do you mean, fear? The second the player wants to re-load because a character gets to HP = 0, you've created the effect you want. You say "not so annoying", but that's just something that's subjective. 

I personally would rather redo the encounter until I perfect it than deal with a pain-in-the-ass later. 

I not just talking about death but also injury which does not have to occur at HP=0. If one is hit with Blindness have a chance that that character will later on develop an eye injury. For example the injury occurs in act 1. The character's eyesight returns, but later on in Act 2 the character experiences partial vision loss.

Modifié par Realmzmaster, 20 mai 2013 - 05:40 .

[Fast Jimmy]

I assume people are trying to play the game well, yes. But that doesn't seem to be a strange assumption.

People know that they should exercise more, or eat healthier, or visit their doctor for a check-up, but many do nothing about it. People know these things. Education does next to nothing in changing behaviors. Penalties or rewards do wonders to do so.

Even if that's true, look at how you've phrased it. "Constatly trying to stay alive". That requires more than a minimal, 1 in 100 penalty that will never lead to any measurable differnece in performance. You have to have a penalty with actual substance to change behaviour.

I used the 1 out of 100 chance to prove a point. If the frequency and magnitude of the penalty is low enough, no one will care enough to reload. Therefore, the feature could be implemented without players feeling the need to reload ever. The trick is finding both the frequency and magnitude where behavior is modified but the rage/quit isn't engaged. Hence I mentioned the "sweet spot."

Like I said - let's assume I'm with you on the fact that players need the excitement. What I'm saying is that the only way to do it - to create a penalty serious enough for the player to want to avoid HP = 0, just has to have you get to a serious enough threshold, after which the consequence is irrelevant because most just weasel their way out of it. 

I believe that tying more consequences to success in gameplay would be the ultimate in driving the desired behavior... but while people sometimes reload because of permadeath, they will reload in a HEARTBEAT if they feel they are encountering the "losing" scenario.

So tying things to stats is, in my mind, the better approach.

And, again, there needs to be a balance or a sweet spot where a player will be going "no, no, NO!" when a companions health drops down, but NOT where when that companion dies, they feel they have come to a place in the game where they cannot move forward without reloading.

I think having a chance at permanent harm to their character(s), coupled with a time-delay on informing them of said negative impact, would have a VERY effective change on increasing the stakes of combat while mitigating rage/quit on the experience.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 20 mai 2013 - 06:00 .

[Fast Jimmy]

I not just talking about death but also injury which does not have to occur at HP=0. If one is hit with Blindness have a chance that that character will later on develop an eye injury. For example the injury occurs in act 1. The character's eyesight returns, but later on in Act 2 the character experiences partial vision loss.

I am less excited about this. Simply because it puts the player at an undue disadvantage.

You may be able to inflict status conditions on enemies (blindness, stun, silence, what have you) but they will never run the risk of suffering long-term consequences from it. Conversely, an enemy that can use this ability against the player has a chance of inflicting long-term harm. This is because there is very little chance of ever running into an enemy multiple times (most commonly because they end up dead after a fight), but the point remains. The player as to experience a risk that the enemy (and, hence, the game) does not.

I'm not totally against it, but I feel it would just lead to general hatred of enemy types that issue out status effects rather than lead to more engagement from the player. Unless, of course, by better tactics, the player is able to avoid such status effects? But if that were the case, I'd need an example of how.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 20 mai 2013 - 05:52 .

[hexaligned]

In Exile wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...
Ideally, whether or not the injury would be permanent would be set when the actual injury occurs, so the player wouldn't know until they either used the kit or went back to camp. This would mitigate some reloading instances, give true risk of severe penalty for death, but not be as black-and-white as perma death.

All that would do is have people re-load every time a character falls to avoid the perma-stat damage. 

You are assuming the saving/loading format would be the same, which hasn't been the case in any game I have played that had perma death.  The most recent Xcom being a good example, where there is only one save file, and the game autosaves everytime an action is performed.

Modifié par relhart, 20 mai 2013 - 06:13 .

[In Exile]

relhart wrote...
You are assuming the saving/loading format would be the same, which hasn't been the case in any game I have played that had perma death.  The most recent Xcom being a good example, where there is only one save file, and the game autosaves everytime an action is performed.

XCOM:EU lets you save in battle, I'm not sure what you're talking about re: the one savefile. 

[In Exile]

Realmzmaster wrote...
I not just talking about death but also injury which does not have to occur at HP=0. If one is hit with Blindness have a chance that that character will later on develop an eye injury. For example the injury occurs in act 1. The character's eyesight returns, but later on in Act 2 the character experiences partial vision loss.

That seems like exactly the kind of system that would lead to rage-quitting. You've just devised a system that literally punishes players for playing the game. 

[hexaligned]

In Exile wrote...

Realmzmaster wrote...
I not just talking about death but also injury which does not have to occur at HP=0. If one is hit with Blindness have a chance that that character will later on develop an eye injury. For example the injury occurs in act 1. The character's eyesight returns, but later on in Act 2 the character experiences partial vision loss.

That seems like exactly the kind of system that would lead to rage-quitting. You've just devised a system that literally punishes players for playing the game. 

Disregard.

Modifié par relhart, 20 mai 2013 - 06:18 .

[In Exile]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
People know that they should exercise more, or eat healthier, or visit their doctor for a check-up, but many do nothing about it. People know these things. Education does next to nothing in changing behaviors. Penalties or rewards do wonders to do so.  

I don't get what you mean. I get being lazy, but I don't see how being lazy ties in at all with what you're asking. If players are too lazy to do something, then how would making it more aggravating to do it make them more likely to engage in the behaviour?

I used the 1 out of 100 chance to prove a point. If the frequency and magnitude of the penalty is low enough, no one will care enough to reload. Therefore, the feature could be implemented without players feeling the need to reload ever. The trick is finding both the frequency and magnitude where behavior is modified but the rage/quit isn't engaged. Hence I mentioned the "sweet spot."

And my point is that there isn't such a thing as a sweet spot. I'm of the view that it's binary. Either the penalty is negibile or it leads to reloading and rage-quitting, basically. 

I believe that tying more consequences to success in gameplay would be the ultimate in driving the desired behavior... but while people sometimes reload because of permadeath, they will reload in a HEARTBEAT if they feel they are encountering the "losing" scenario.

Who are the people who distinguish between "losing" and permadeath? I get the "live with the consequences" sort of players, but is there anyone else beside that group?

And, again, there needs to be a balance or a sweet spot where a player will be going "no, no, NO!" when a companions health drops down, but NOT where when that companion dies, they feel they have come to a place in the game where they cannot move forward without reloading.  

What, I misunderstood, are you asking that actually taking damage should lead to stat drops?

I think having a chance at permanent harm to their character(s), coupled with a time-delay on informing them of said negative impact, would have a VERY effective change on increasing the stakes of combat while mitigating rage/quit on the experience.

Not really. Either the trigger is on HP = 0 which just turns into into a 'who wants to live with the chance' debate, or you're doing it while HP drops which means that you're either switching the effective threshold to something like don't let HP drop below HP = X, or you're punishing people for taking damage at all which will likely just reduce your audience. 

[hexaligned]

In Exile wrote...

relhart wrote...
You are assuming the saving/loading format would be the same, which hasn't been the case in any game I have played that had perma death.  The most recent Xcom being a good example, where there is only one save file, and the game autosaves everytime an action is performed.

XCOM:EU lets you save in battle, I'm not sure what you're talking about re: the one savefile. 

You can save at any time yes, but that save is always overriden whenever you start playing again, you can not go back to a previous save.  At least on the classic difficulty setting, with perma death enabled, I never played the other difficulty settings, they may have had different setups for save games.

[In Exile]

relhart wrote...
You can save at any time yes, but that save is always overriden whenever you start playing again, you can not go back to a previous save.  At least on the classic difficulty setting, with perma death enabled, I never played the other difficulty settings, they may have had different setups for save games.

I think you're thinking of Iroman mode, but that's not tied to difficulty as I recall. 

[Shaigunjoe]

relhart wrote...

In Exile wrote...

relhart wrote...
You are assuming the saving/loading format would be the same, which hasn't been the case in any game I have played that had perma death.  The most recent Xcom being a good example, where there is only one save file, and the game autosaves everytime an action is performed.

XCOM:EU lets you save in battle, I'm not sure what you're talking about re: the one savefile. 

You can save at any time yes, but that save is always overriden whenever you start playing again, you can not go back to a previous save.  At least on the classic difficulty setting, with perma death enabled, I never played the other difficulty settings, they may have had different setups for save games.

They do, the ironman mode is what you are refering to I believe.

Though I think the series that did perma death best was fire emblem, simply because not only did you lose a skilled soldier, you also missed out on some storie elements (though it did kind of cop out on characters that are uber important to the tale)

[Fast Jimmy]

EDIT: I can't edit this post easily on my phone (I apologize for any typos), but I wanted to clarify - the permanent injury would only occur (in the model I presented) if death occurs; HP = 0. This would not happen just by taking damage. 

I don't get what you mean. I get being lazy, but I don't see how being lazy ties in at all with what you're asking. If players are too lazy to do something, then how would making it more aggravating to do it make them more likely to engage in the behaviour?

I wouldn't term it "laziness" myself, but since you used that word, I'll keep with it.

Laziness prevents a player from optimizing (or, in MANY cases, even going into) their Tactics screen. Laziness prevents a player from wanting to know and learning enemy tactics, stats and weaknesses. Laziness prevents a player from learning proper builds and how they can interact with equipment in the best way.

These are somewhat complex ideas, to be sure. But it doesn't take a rock-hard grasp of any of them to excel, especially on the low or median difficulty levels. But a player does not NEED to do any of that under the current system. They may not even notice injuries in DA2, since next to none of the quest lines involve a section of areas that are concurrent, so visiting a home base (and subsequent auto-heal of injuries) would occur so frequently, they might not even notice.

And my point is that there isn't such a thing as a sweet spot. I'm of the view that it's binary. Either the penalty is negibile or it leads to reloading and rage-quitting, basically.

Nothing in human behavior is binary. There are two outcomes, yes. But the range of who will do which of those two choices and under what circumstances are incredibly nuanced and fluid.

Not really. Either the trigger is on HP = 0 which just turns into into a 'who wants to live with the chance' debate, or you're doing it while HP drops which means that you're either switching the effective threshold to something like don't let HP drop below HP = X, or you're punishing people for taking damage at all which will likely just reduce your audience.

This is silly. Challenge does not reduce your audience. Overly strict challenge? Yes, arguably it does. But the mere presence of bad outcomes due to player activity will not result in players not liking your game, in-and-of-itself. Like nearly everything else in the world, it is all a matter of execution.

Now... we are know there are two schools of thought when it comes to changing behavior - the carrot and the stick. Inflicting permadeath is a big oak tree of a stick. Injuries that result in penalties until they are healed but could also result in reduced permanent injuries is a twig by comparison. After all, we aren't removing companions completely from the game if they fall in battle or resulting in an immediate "Game Over" screen if the PC dies. It still allows everyone to stay alive and active for story and plot reasons.

So what about a carrot? What if, by using a character in combat and not having them die for X number of fights (or, perhaps, by having them do such things as cross-class combos, or land killing blows, or save the life of an ally, fill-in-the-blank-here) could result in them earning a BONUS? After all, experience isn't a static, wholly inflexible number. Just like anything, hot streaks can occur if you "get on a roll." What if after, say, five fights in one dungeon/instance of a character surviving, they could get a stat boost? Just like injuries, they would be temporary and be random as to what they actually affect. They could have cool names like "Keen Reflexes" or "Killer Instinct" or what have you.

They would last until the dungeon was over, just like injuries. If you do fall in combat, your bonus would be dropped and replaced with the injury.

IN ADDITION (all things being fair), what if there was a random chance of the boost becoming permanent, with a smaller version of that boost staying with the player after combat?

This way, we not only offer punishment to a player for doing badly, but out-and-out reward for doing well. That will result in people paying more attention (and having more investment) nwhat is going on in combat (and what they can do to make it better).

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 20 mai 2013 - 07:55 .

[Sir JK]

A temporary penalty that is applied upon losing a partymember that may later lead to a randomly applied permanent penalty? It's not as good an idea as it sounds like.

For one... there's the slippery slope. Each time you lose someone, the loss of combat ability will increase the risk of losing someone else. Thus you start upon a spiral downwards. While it might stop there as it hammers home that you need to work on protecting the party, it might also not. Maybe the heal does not go off in time, or that stun comes just at the wrong moment and bam... you got your second one. And then a third one... and eventually you hit the point where you have to replay a large part of the game because it's now too difficult. Or worse... restart.
Only the most hardcore would ever find that appealing.

Secondly... a delayed onset makes it less tangible. Even if defeat to eye-injury to blindness sounds logical, it won't feel like it. You won't see the transition happen. It's a pure punishment. A big: "You're not good enough".
The thing is... when games and sport hand out punishment it's to disincentivize certain behaviour. It must come swiftly to connect the behaviour with the punishment and it must be unambigous.
While in this case, the punishment may seem to be: don't let partymembers die. It could also very well be interpreted as a punishment for not taking the toughest partymembers (rather than the ones you want to take), for experimenting with new techniques and abilities (rather than working with what you know works) or just exploring/doing side quests.
And there's always the risk that the brain may never connect a delayed onset punishment with the disencouraged behaviour at all. At which point it's just plain annoying (or game-wrecking).

Thirdly... We will always seek a way around an obstacle. Often the easiest one. If this is permanent, and randomly applied, that means we have only one way around it: reloading. So this mechanic would essentially add a form of grinding. Do it over and over until success.
The absolute least engaging bit of mmo gameplay... except with load screens... and punishment instead of reward. Sounds appealing, doesn't it?

So we have a system that makes it increasingly likely to make the game unplayable, a punishment that does not punish and an encouragment that promotes repetition in order to avoid an obstacle.

Consider Minsweeper for a moment. Minesweeper has a pretty hefty penalty for failing: game over. But... it always tells you just how many mines there is surrounding every square. And it provides you with a massive reward when there isn't any surrounding mines. So while the penalty is permanent, it's easy to learn how to avoid it. It encourages you to use math and probability to win the game and learning from your mistakes. It's not progress by repetition, it's progress by innovation.

Now for a more relevant example. Baldur's Gate. It has a whole slew of penalties. Death, disease, paralyze, ability drain and level drain. But! It also provides an even greater array of means to avoid it. The price is usually the heaviest one in DnD: spellslots. But this also means you're always just a rest away from treating it (or in BG1... a trip to a temple).
So no matter how poorly you do... as long as you did not fail you can always move on. It's not a punishment, but a lesson. You grow from it and you're encouraged to avoid it... but you need not repeat it. It encourages innovation to avoid inconvenience, not repetition to avoid mistakes. Like minesweeper, it tells you to learn from it.

And that's what a combat penalty should do. It should be inconvenient, but avoidable. It should never force you to redo anything. It should encourage you to do things differently next time, but promise that there will be a next time.

Now the injury system is much weak to do this. Injury-packs are much too cheap. You barely bat an eyelash and it's over. It's not even inconvenient. The tricky bit is of course what would be sufficient? Combat penalties work to a degree, but cannot be too crippling. Backtracking long distances and slowed characters are excruciating and unbearable.
One idea could be that some high end abilities are locked out (or just weaker) on injured characters, big payoff abilities. Things you don't need, but are rather fun and effective. Especially against mooks. Thus, if a character is injured, they cannot use these abilities and thus fights will drag on a little bit longer. Then couple this with injury kits and or equalient spells being a bit less available. Requiring you to do some sort of effort to reap their benefit, but not too much. To add a bit of value to them.
So abilities that make the "chore"-fights quicker but are locked out by acquiring an injury, and then add a bit of expense at removing them. Thus making the injuries inconvenient, but not crippling.

[Wozearly]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

...almost every piece of telemetry and game research into completion shows that the majority of games have a significant number of players that never complete them. Often a clear majority.

Unless there's evidence that DA2 had a far higher completion rate, which there isn't as far as I know...

Fernando Melo gives a breakdown here.

I couldn't be tasked with whether or not 5% is considered significant or not, however.
.

Firstly, thanks for the link - very interesting to see the figures.

Secondly, if your comment about logical constructs was aimed in any way at me, sorry. I was actually gunning for the same point you were making about people's hypotheses being presented as gospel truth, when its not difficult to throw a spanner shaped counter-argument into the works.

[AlanC9]

In Exile wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...
People know that they should exercise more, or eat healthier, or visit their doctor for a check-up, but many do nothing about it. People know these things. Education does next to nothing in changing behaviors. Penalties or rewards do wonders to do so.  

I don't get what you mean. I get being lazy, but I don't see how being lazy ties in at all with what you're asking. If players are too lazy to do something, then how would making it more aggravating to do it make them more likely to engage in the behaviour?

I think the theory is that they'd actually find the playstyle more fun if they only could be forced to try it a couple of times -- if they wouldn't prefer playing that way then then the whole proposal is an exercise in paternalism that we shouldn't  take seriously for a moment.

Presumably a player wouldn't ragequit after the first battle.

[AlanC9]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
Laziness prevents a player from optimizing (or, in MANY cases, even going into) their Tactics screen. Laziness prevents a player from wanting to know and learning enemy tactics, stats and weaknesses. Laziness prevents a player from learning proper builds and how they can interact with equipment in the best way. 

These are somewhat complex ideas, to be sure. But it doesn't take a rock-hard grasp of any of them to excel, especially on the low or median difficulty levels. But a player does not NEED to do any of that under the current system. They may not even notice injuries in DA2, since next to none of the quest lines involve a section of areas that are concurrent, so visiting a home base (and subsequent auto-heal of injuries) would occur so frequently, they might not even notice.

Why are you worrying about the low and median difficulty levels? A player who chooses to play on those levels is either still learning the game or doesn't particularly want to engage in any of the behaviors you're trying to push on him.

I'm starting to get the impression that the proposal actually is paternalistic.

[Fast Jimmy]

For one... there's the slippery slope. Each time you lose someone, the loss of combat ability will increase the risk of losing someone else. Thus you start upon a spiral downwards. While it might stop there as it hammers home that you need to work on protecting the party, it might also not. Maybe the heal does not go off in time, or that stun comes just at the wrong moment and bam... you got your second one. And then a third one... and eventually you hit the point where you have to replay a large part of the game because it's now too difficult. Or worse... restart.
Only the most hardcore would ever find that appealing.

If the current system, with its plethora of injury kits, had the system I am suggesting, it would not run the risk of "piling up" on a character until they and experienced a huge number of combat deaths. I would possibly add a kink that injury kits could not be used when there are any nearby enemy groups (hundreds of meters) to prevent a "I got an injury? Let me use my injury kit right now... Dang! Permanent injury. Oh well, time to reload..."

If you make reloading more of a hassle than dealing with the slight injury inconvenience, only the most perfectionist would reload. Or use console commands, for the PC Master Race.

Secondly... a delayed onset makes it less tangible. Even if defeat to eye-injury to blindness sounds logical, it won't feel like it. You won't see the transition happen. It's a pure punishment. A big: "You're not good enough".
The thing is... when games and sport hand out punishment it's to disincentivize certain behaviour. It must come swiftly to connect the behaviour with the punishment and it must be unambigous.
While in this case, the punishment may seem to be: don't let partymembers die. It could also very well be interpreted as a punishment for not taking the toughest partymembers (rather than the ones you want to take), for experimenting with new techniques and abilities (rather than working with what you know works) or just exploring/doing side quests.
And there's always the risk that the brain may never connect a delayed onset punishment with the disencouraged behaviour at all. At which point it's just plain annoying (or game-wrecking).

This is a valid concern. If you disentangle the consequence from the action, it SERIOUSLY runs the risk of not doing anything other than feeling like a random punishment.

But, by the same token, if the consequence is given immediately after the mistake is made, it is far too easy for the player to just reload and avoid that consequence. By sheer luck, even the most passive of players can fall into sheer dumb luck with a fight and get away Scot free. So it encourages the easiest sidestep, instead of encouraging engagement in the game's mechanics.

By that token, I feel the delayed application is the best course of action for this theoretical gameplay element.

Thirdly... We will always seek a way around an obstacle. Often the easiest one. If this is permanent, and randomly applied, that means we have only one way around it: reloading. So this mechanic would essentially add a form of grinding. Do it over and over until success.
The absolute least engaging bit of mmo gameplay... except with load screens... and punishment instead of reward. Sounds appealing, doesn't it?

I would disagree here. Strongly.

Reloading is A) not the only course of action and not a given for players. You can learn to deal with the consequences and you can learn from them. And if you make reloading the bigger inconvenience of the bunch, then it would be more effective.

After all... we are treating players actually engaging in the combat system as some type of punishment or activity the player doesn't even want to do... that's (hopefully) not the case. The player just needs a nudge to stay awake during the endless string of combat encounters. Not having the same character did multiple times over the course of the game to beat the odds and actually start acquiring enough permanent injuries to REALLY affect gameplay would be... difficult. At that point, it would just be a little nudge to say "hey... There are these things called potions. You can use them during combat!"

Speaking of, tutorials need to exist for a GREAT DEAL of things combat related. While most of the DA systems are logical, they, like so many game systems, are not intuitive by nature. The game needs to TELL players things before it begins assuming they understand them. This can be skill able and optional to see, but it needs to exist. And, if a player begins to fail or do poorly, it needs to prompt the player to consult (or re-consult) these tutorials.

Now the injury system is much weak to do this. Injury-packs are much too cheap. You barely bat an eyelash and it's over. It's not even inconvenient. The tricky bit is of course what would be sufficient? Combat penalties work to a degree, but cannot be too crippling. Backtracking long distances and slowed characters are excruciating and unbearable.
One idea could be that some high end abilities are locked out (or just weaker) on injured characters, big payoff abilities. Things you don't need, but are rather fun and effective. Especially against mooks. Thus, if a character is injured, they cannot use these abilities and thus fights will drag on a little bit longer. Then couple this with injury kits and or equalient spells being a bit less available. Requiring you to do some sort of effort to reap their benefit, but not too much. To add a bit of value to them.

Woah, woah, woah, woah... hold the horses.

You just admonished me for having something that can stack up with one injury, then two, then the whole party until it now becomes impossible to win... but then suggest this?

Locking out abilities is going to make combat harder. A LOT harder. The player is going to VISCERALLY feel that harder difficulty. Unless the skills you lock are not even good ones (in which case, they shouldn't really exist, IMO)... and then, what if the player doesn't have those skills? Would that also result in a player not picking up certain skills because they are one of the "marked for death" skills that get taken out by injury? Oooh... serious problems with this one.

Now, I'm not against injury kits being a little less available. But how would you limit healing spells? They have a set healing cost and a cool down. If a character has it, they can cast it all the live-long-day under the current skill system. And, ultimately, it doesn't solve the problem - the player can have a character fall time and time again, but have zero long-term consequence. Which means there is no reason for the player to change their mindset, approach or even engagement of the game.

And, as I've stated before... when a player isn't engaged, they are bored. You can have pace ninjas doing backflips and fighting with lightsabers and if a player isn't engaged, they will be bored. There is some onus on the combat system, for sure, on that front... but the gameplay design does nothing to encourage that initial level of interest. A new player may freak out when a companion falls in battle, but then sees them hop up after the fight, with full health and mana, and probably thinks "oh, sweet, they can just get right back up." That enforces the idea that letting characters die isn't that big of a deal. If you have that mindset, I argue that not only do you try less, but you also get yourself in more trouble. After all, while one combat death is nothing to worry about, it can make the second, third and (final) fourth one that much easier.

And a player being bored and looking at a Game Over screen more often is definitely a bad thing, I would say.

[Fast Jimmy]

Why are you worrying about the low and median difficulty levels? A player who chooses to play on those levels is either still learning the game or doesn't particularly want to engage in any of the behaviors you're trying to push on him.

I'm starting to get the impression that the proposal actually is paternalistic.

It is not paternalistic. It is smart game design.

The more you get your players to engage in all aspects of a game, the more they will enjoy it.

The key is communication, something I feel the DA games do very poorly at. The player is not told how combat works, they are not told where the Tactics screen even is (let alone how to use it). They are not given a description on what resistances do, or how they work. They aren't told what a cool down is and why it is important. They are not told what Statistics REALLY do in the game. Things like cross-class-combos are given a tiny blurb in the manual, when they are actually HUGE parts of the gameplay for DA2.

I'm not disdainful of those who don't understand RPG combat. I'm hardly an expert. But barring better communication of how the systems work, the only way you can get people to engage in them other than the most cursory of button smashing is to incentivize them to do so. Because, as a button masher, the DA series is pretty terrible. But as a tactical RPG? It's pretty dang good.

Instead of just excluding groups of people who aren't familiar with tactical RPG systems, you could give them an incentive to embrace the concepts the game presents. Otherwise, the only other option is to tone done the tactical gameplay altogether (or make it so unnecessary to success that it is not even worth engaging with). Which I think would make the series weaker.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

You assume that everyone tries their hardest during combat, and any failure will be a result of them simply being bad.  

I assume people are trying to play the game well, yes. But that doesn't seem to be a strange assumption.

Playing the game well might mean different things to different players.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I assume people are trying to play the game well, yes. But that doesn't seem to be a strange assumption.

People know that they should exercise more, or eat healthier, or visit their doctor for a check-up, but many do nothing about it. People know these things. Education does next to nothing in changing behaviors. Penalties or rewards do wonders to do so.

Ask any economist.  Incentives matter.

[cindercatz]

Quick note about OP:
I love modding. I'm a console player. I love your idea. I guarantee if you allow significant visual modding in particular through a console interface, you'll see mods from me. Scenario writing, in depth level editing, etc., I'd also love, but it's more time consuming from my pov. The greatest thing about it, though, is that it would unlock the modding community's output for console gamers at all. I have wanted to play some of those DA mods out there for years and just wasn't able to.

And to the topic at hand:
Agreed with SirJK, except I don't think you should ever lock out abilities entirely or singularly nerf particular abilities, because that in essense just leaves you with an earlier version of your character that wasn't quite as fun to play as your suped up current one. And if the option to avoid any of these gameplay penalties is simply to reload and play again, all it does is add tedium. Tedium might not make someone rage-quit, but it is pretty likely to simply bore people into indifference. Same result.

So let's look at it from a different perspective. Penalty and reward together. Choice. This is a choice game, after all. I don't want to enforce certain-certain min/max strategies. I want character freedom. So instead, if you lose one thing (say a character that is wounded in battle stays wounded X amount of hours no matter what, no permastat penalties or permadeath, and no item cure alls) significant but not crippling to gameplay, you gain something story relevant. The character will still be available while injured but will change animation and some dialogue, maybe have a conversation about that particular injury and how they're dealing with it.

X-COM:EU is a whole different animal, because the characters and their story relevance are 99% interchangeable. DA is all about these ten or so characters and how they interrelate for 100+ hours. You can't sacrifice or nerf any of them without either removing them from the story altogether or reducing their availability in it because of stacking gameplay ineffectiveness. Instead, consider another game (that did have permadeath): Vandal Hearts 2. Characters were largely story relevant. If a particular character died, the story didn't leave you simply missing out on their content. Instead, you had alternate content that acknowledged the character's death and further reaching story repercussions afterwords. So in death and loss, there was also reward for the player in seeing the consequences through. With 82 endings available in a hugely branching plot with text dialogue and sprites, you can do that. The same thing is true in Heavy Rain, though it's a much shorter game.

In DA, you can't very well spend the jots on so many variables in BioWare's style of storytelling with these production values. So simply provide some exclusive story content instead. Don't just punish the player for playing the game a different way. Reward them some minor story compensation for the effectiveness lost for however long it lasts. Balance it out with something added that's worth putting up with the gameplay penalty.

That way you have consequences, but not really punishment. And it would encourage unconventional builds and sub-optimal, story centric party construction, which is one of the things that's so great about DA anyway. You can roll the gameplay if you want and play at full ability, but story's what it's all about to a lot of players, and this would just reinforce that kind of experimentation.