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[Servant Corps]

Johnathan  S. Fox creates a model by which to examine the 'value' of items, compared to the 'effort' needed  to gain the item in question. He looks at the ratio of cost to utility, and states that  players will be more likely to get an item that has the better ratio. Johnatan S. Fox then talks  about how this affects MMORPGs:

If you divide utility by cost, you get a general rating for how awesome an object or  strategy is, and how willing a player will be to get it.

It might seem like a perfectly balanced game would have all of its objects have the same utility  to cost ratio, but this is not necessarily true. MMORPGs often rate their equipment in rarity  tiers, where higher rarity items have both higher costs and higher utility — but the opportunity  cost in lost utility from using a lower rarity item instead of a higher rarity one is so high  that medium to high rarity items almost always win out as the superior strategy. A game like  World of Warcraft manipulates this over time by shifting the dominant rarity across levels, so  that low level players will tend to play with low rarity items, while high level players will be  decked out with high rarity items. This adds to the sense of progress and accomplishment in the  game as players exceed the base performance of their level more and more the longer they play.

...I wonder if this utility to cost ratio could be abused for Single Player games too.

In MMORPGs, it is necessary to have a sense of progression so as to urge people to continue on  the treadmill. But in single player games, once a person bought the game, it is unimportant to  encourage people to go on the treadmill. Thus, what works for MMORPGs does not necessarily work  for single-player games.

If the goal of a SP game is to produce the most utility (and it does not have to have such a  goal, granted), then cost is counterproductive. Cost reduce the amount of utility that can be  acquired. Sure, you got the +5 Sword of Slashing, but you spent an hour of your time getting  that item. An hour that would never be gotten back.

Thus, why would one have the Player pay any Cost whatsoever? Give the player all the Items he  wants. The player gets all the Utility from the Items, and do not have to pay any Cost.

Alternatively, if your game is lineral, a less radical course of action would be giving the  player the Items they need when they reach certain parts of the game. Players will have to pay a  Cost...but the Cost is the Time Investment needed to play through the game. Essentially, it  would be the same as if the Players had paid no cost whatsoever for the Item, since they have to  play the game anyway to get it. So, again, it is zero cost, lots of utility.

However, there does seem to be a problem I realize with this idea: If you provide something  without cost, people will not "appericate" it. It's only when you 'work' for it, and pay a Cost  for it, then that Item actually become useful. I think it is important to formulate this concern  in economic discourse.

There are items that I would like to call, for lack of a better word, "Luxury Goods". The  higher the Cost of a Luxury Good, the more demand there is for that Good. The reason is simple:  If you manage to acquire the good, then you must have enough Time Investment in order to get the  good. Therefore, the Luxury Good is a status symbol, and could be used for "bragging rights".  Thus, developers are tempted to create goods that have high Time Investment. The end result is  higher difficulty levels, finally culiminating in punishing games like "I Wanna Be The Guy",  where the main reason these games are popular is due to the belief that anybody who can beat  that game can get "bragging rights". If we assume Time=Money, then the more Time a person has,  then  the more demand for Luxury Goods.

At the same time, there are Inferior Goods. The lower the Cost of the Inferior Good, the  less demand there is for that Good. That's because of the preception that, if anybody can do it,  then it isn't really important at all. It has no "bragging rights" whatsoever. The more Time a  person has, the less demand there would be for Inferior Goods, and the player will instead play  normal games or Luxury Goods.

Basically: Inferior Goods=Super Easy Carebear Mode (possibly even Casual Games). Luxury  Good=Super Hard "Hardcore" Mode. And the argument for having Costs is to prevent the goods from  being seen as an "Inferior Goods", which will only be played by people with only a little bit of  Time, and will be abanonded by people who have more Time.

Yet, Time is different from Money. It isn't like Money where, if you spend it, you can acquire  some more money. Once you spend Time, you lose that Time forever, and you can't regain the Time  that you wasted. The concept of "bragging rights" does not apply for single-player games too,  since the only person the game will entertain is the player itself. Cost does decrease  utility, and I do not know how much Cost is needed before "Bragging Rights" can be  acquired...and if the Higher Cost would be worth the possible increase in Bragging Rights.

I do still think that the concept of reducing or even getting rid of Costs for Items entirely is  the best way of increasing Utility for single-player games. But I am open to any other  arguments.

[eerr]

cost? utility?

what, are we paying bills here?

[Sensei]

No bragging rights in single player games? There's some Elder Scrolls players who go without a helmet just to see their character's face. If you've played any Elder Scrolls games, you know what it means to forgo use of an item slot. Not everyone is looking for a most efficient cost/utility ratio.

[Cheeetar]

If you give items immediately to players, why is the game there? Why not just have the monsters already dead? You can see the death of the monster as a gain, a Utility in that it is no longer attacking you and draining your health. The cost of getting rid of this will take time, so if the monster was dead you would have no cost and the Utility of the health drain not being there.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I think it's important to step back and address why we are putting these items in the game in the first place. Let's say that our purpose, in creating a game, is to maximize the utility that game has to the player. We do this by making the game extremely fun, and by giving it replayability and longevity. Key to maximizing the value the game has to players, then, is to address how to make the game fun.

There is a concept of the flow channel that carries a lot of water with game developers, based on the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. The basic idea is that people are in a state of "flow" when they have clear goals and challenges that approximately match their skills, leaving them neither anxious nor bored. As applied to games, it means that the challenges must increase as the player's abilities increase:



When we design games, we do try to make sure that the player chews up plenty of time playing our game, but it's not just throwing up a treadmill. We want players to move through the flow channel, neither overwhelmed nor bored, moving up and to the right on that graph over time. Players complaining of grinding and treadmills aren't in the flow channel, they're in the boredom section -- their skills exceed the challenges. This is failure on the part of the designer. But to consume time isn't in itself bad; after all, the whole point of games is to provide fun and recreation. The longer we can do that with a game, the better we're fulfilling that purpose. In other words, providing utility to the player means keeping them challenged for an extended period of time.

Players work hard to beat the challenge because that's what the game is about. In an RPG, they'll grab the best equipment they can buy, and minmax their stats. Players are exercising their skills to demonstrate mastery over the game. If the game ever beats the player by making a dungeon so hard they can't progress, the player will give up and play something else. If the game ever surrenders to the player by not having another dungeon, or having each challenge so easy it's not worth the player's time, the player will get bored and play something else. Either way, we failed to entertain, and the utility of the game is decreased.

Taking this into account, there are two reasons we don't just give the player the +10 sword of devastation at no cost. The first reason is because it breaks the balance, the PC dominates all enemies, and the game drops into boredom. The second reason is because, even if the sword is appropriately balanced against the enemies the player is fighting now, managing money and equipment is part of the challenge of the game. The cost of that sword is actually part of the flow equation, and removing it drops the challenge a few points closer to boredom.

Ultimately, the reason simulated economies like weapon shops exist in games is because it's more fun to have them than to just give the player that power directly. Many people love to browse through, pine for some sword they can't afford, save up for it, and then laugh gleefully as their power increases substantially due to your shrewd decision to save up for it. Taking away the costs here is like using cheat codes -- it's fun for awhile, but it drops you out of the flow channel, and in the end you'll get bored and move on to another game.

[Muz]

No bragging rights in single player games? There's some Elder Scrolls players who go without a helmet just to see their character's face. If you've played any Elder Scrolls games, you know what it means to forgo use of an item slot. Not everyone is looking for a most efficient cost/utility ratio.

I have a character in Runescape who I regularly grind up, just for the sake of having a hobo-like guy run around killing armored fellows with only a dagger. Yeah, it's very costly, but just surprising one person is worth it. Unfortunately, Runescape displays combat level in bright red numbers, so it doesn't work so often.


Back on topic, the inferior/luxury goods have been around for a while. That's why you have games with unlockable special endings. You can work once to get the easy ending, or work hard to get the happiest ending. It's an easy, and less jarring way of letting the player pick his own difficulty level.

I also like the idea of working ethics into it. You have an easy way to do things (the evil way). But being evil hurts your chances of doing things. Grabbing a +10 longsword of lifestealing might let you kill things much more easily, but the more you use it, the weaker your soul becomes, and it'll block you from the end level where you have to charge a gem with your soul or whatever.

Personally, I don't believe grinding is a good game mechanic at all. It appeals to those with minimum skill ("the masses") because you get progress without skill. It only works in multiplayer games because time is the easiest and most direct form of cost you can force upon someone. Everyone has to pay a certain cost in time (or money) to get things. It's still ridiculously easy, but we put up with it, because of its utility (bragging rights, achievement, pwning skill).


Single player games still need a cost! But it shouldn't be time. Dungeon Crawl is a brilliant example of a game that doesn't apply a time investment as a cost, but instead forces you to work with risk and choosing opportunities.

Off the top of my head, here's a few non-time related costs I can think of associated with SP games:

• Money/items - Buy item early, or save money for later? Buy one really powerful item or a lot of good items? Should I drink potion now?
• Min/maxing - Bad skill synergies mean that you can't beat a baddie later.
• Quests - Player has to think about how to solve a quest, and are rewarded with some utility. Some quests also limit you be requiring a high persuasion instead of melee weapons, and force a choice while min/maxing.
• Tactics - Games like Avernum and ToEE force you to get your movement right, blindly tossing everyone into battle doesn't help.
• Character combo - The player has to choose the characters they think can win the game. An interesting side product is that the utility could be in unlocking a storyline, not just in pwning.

With all these choices, you shouldn't have to rely on grinding as a game mechanic, but rather as a cost for unskilled people who can't afford the other things

[Outcast Orange]

I haven't read too much of the above posts, but this doesn't seem to belong in creative projects...

[Mephansteras]

Another thing to keep in mind is the type of game you're making and what your intended audience is. Some people like grinding, they enjoy being able to invest huge amounts of time into the game to get the Ultimate Weapon/Skill/Party/whatever, even if it isn't strictly necessary.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a good example of this. You can play the game straight through without doing a lot of grinding or side quests and beat the game. It's challenging for a new player and rewarding. But it's not the only path. I have friends who delight in grinding up a party to level 99 and having all the best equipment in the game. It takes them *days* of playing (in hours) to get to that point, but they do it because it's fun for them. It's not necessary to beat the game, however, so I consider the ability to grind for that ridiculous power fine.

You don't want games to be too easy or too hard, but allowing the player to put the game into an 'Easy mode' or 'Hard mode' can add a lot of enjoyment for the player.

[qwertyuiopas]

I put in thousands of tries(ten thousands?) at at least 10 seconds(I think) each to get the secret message in Metroid Fusion(GBA game). I think at least 10 hours of time over a few weeks.
And all I got was a slightly amusing message.
(And I used the internet to know when in the game the start of the path was found, aand that it existed at all, but not the sequence required to pass it or the message itself)

In Zero Mission, you have a few endings that are accomplished by doing difficult tasks. Completion time is one of the most basic few of the 8 endings, as well as collection rate. Fast completion and/or total completion(more challenging variations also split at playing on normal or hard) were some, but the two most difficult(minimalistic completion) had no time limit, even though they could have implemented one easily. They chose to limit the challenges with rewards(Only pictures) to all but the absolute hardest. The fact that they didn't distinguish <2 hour near-minimalistic runs from longer ones shows that they expected either that the average minimalistic run would be fast anyway, or that it would be way too hard for even the best. Or it might feel too arbitrary.


In both cases, it is a difficult optional challenge, with very little reward, but still having a reward for the effort.


Also, all of them rely on skill, not time put in, and accuiring the skill required takes so long that you would never have accuired it before you spent 24 hours MINIMUM trying. In this case, you can also take N as an example, where the most skilled players can complete all 100 5-level episodes and earn the right to use any colour of character they could ask for.

{Time invested in skill -> skill applied to dificult scenario -> reward}, rather than {time -> reward}.


And most interesting to point out, is that you don't get a special item from any of those examples. You only get an image, or a colour scheme, or even just some congradulatory text.


From this: Direct time-based investments are generally rewarded with a gameplay change, while indirect skill-based investments usually have a personal accomplishment as a reward rather than a material in-game item.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Actually, one thing I should mention is that my original blog post on cost and utility in game economies wasn't intended to only refer to MMORPGs -- there are economies like this in all sorts of games. The aforementioned weapon shop is only one example; from skill trees to tactical decisions in a wargame, virtually anything that involves choice can be analyzed using microeconomics.

[Bricks]

Woah, neato, a microeconomics/rpg topic.  Fun stuff.

The utility/cost thing is interesting, especially when you consider that skill/dedication ≠ time, even though they have associated costs.  The biggest issue I had with WoW was how I could play just as often as a "hardcore" player, but due to the fact that I was trying to pass some rigorous courses and occasionally sleep, I was unable to hit the raiding circuit.  Blizzard did a poor job (at least, while I still played) of providing "casuals" with content that enabled them to acquire high quality (aka utility) gear without requiring you to farm some damn livers for days or spend weeks trying to find a halfway competent group willing to go the hour out of their way to complete your quest requirement.

Solo RPGs do a much better job with this.  I've noticed, especially with the wider availability of the internet, that the developers don't make consistent judgment calls on providing the player with information.  Consider Fable 2 (a game I loathe for its mediocrity).  One of the best weapons in the game could be obtained by jumping off a building at the right spot, and then completing a few simple puzzles.  If you didn't know about it, the item was difficult to stumble upon, but once you had that information, you could obtain that weapon at an extremely low cost.  Fallout 3, by comparison, had a number of well-hidden items, and the game was much more expansive than Fable 2.  Even when you did know where the items were, you still had to fight your way to them.  It also had some high-utility, low-cost items to acquire, like Lincoln's Rifle.  It could be repaired with a very common item, too, the only downside being its ammo requirement (the rare .44s).

I'm not sure if the point of this topic was to implement such a system, whether in DF or a solo project, but here are my observations.  "Cost" must be kept in perspective, since a player's "wealth" (whether that be skills, tools, or just plain 'ole money) will generally increase over time.  Time expenditure itself will not necessarily decrease.  If a game aims to have most items with the same utility/cost ratio, then the game would have to decrease the amount of time a certain item takes to acquire as the player becomes more wealthy.  RPGs do this, in a sense, because fighting a bunch of lvl 1 rats when you are lvl 50 is trivial.  You still need to walk to the item in question, and if any exploration is required, there is an additional fixed time cost (even if the character has a higher "speed" stat, you will still spend the same relative amount of time running about).  These adjustments to time-cost are tough to make, since every circumstance is different.  If the item is located in a mountainous region, perhaps it will be easier to acquire later in the game because the player has a tool that helps him climb the mountains.

Luxury goods are something of a must.  I don't particularly care for those that are all cost, no utility (I'm not the type to hunt Xbox achievements).  In Oblivion, there was a special staff that had a resurrection effect when cast on a dead body, giving you your own temporary zombie slave.  This had the obvious "wow" factor, and it took a long series of quests to obtain.  It also had some utility, too, although it wasn't that great.  In video games, there is a notion of uniqueness that can't be denied as a motivation - a special suit of armor, an artifact sword, etc.  These items, in reality, might only be marginally better, but they provide a sense of completion that an effectively equivalent, though generic item just doesn't match.

Inferior goods are important, too, especially in the realm of "start from nothing" RPGs.  Part of the fun of Fallout 3 was slowly conquering the wasteland with only a pistol and an old jumpsuit.  As the game passed, you could repair your items to a higher quality, which slowly helped you build up your strength without altering gameplay too much.  A wealthy character could ultimately roam the wastelands with little more than a single weapon, a ration of ammo, and whatever they were wearing.  A new character learned to carry all sorts of random crap - meds, food, stim-paks, ammo of all sorts, multiple weapons, extra armor, grenades, etc.  Most of it was so rare or in such terrible quality that the player was compelled to diversify and squirrel away the marginally useful items.  It seemed like a very realistic system.

[winner]

What happens if you have the equipment that takes more time to get have,  lower utility.
Imagine a sword that does 2^d6 damage, it's utility is lower than a more consistent sword that does the same average damage but if you make it rarer, the bragging rights and occasional overkill makes up for it.


What about a weapon who's damage is the inverse of your opponents hit-points.

[Muz]

Now that I think of it, this is a pretty boring topic. There's not really much to discuss about it. I surprised we're rambling so much about cost and utility

[bjlong]

For single-player games, shouldn't the focus be more on obstacle/tool rather than cost/utility? Because it doesn't matter if you find the tool very useful overall--if it doesn't help you surmount the next obstacle, then it's useless to you at that point. The key would be to make sure that the obstacle requires you, as a user, to think about how to surmount it, rather than simply pushing the auto-win button every time.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

For single-player games, shouldn't the focus be more on obstacle/tool rather than cost/utility? Because it doesn't matter if you find the tool very useful overall--if it doesn't help you surmount the next obstacle, then it's useless to you at that point. The key would be to make sure that the obstacle requires you, as a user, to think about how to surmount it, rather than simply pushing the auto-win button every time.

If you thinking about puzzle adventure games, I can definitely see how there isn't much of a cost element to gameplay, and it's really about figuring out what tools are appropriate to the situation. A game like Grim Fandango doesn't have much of an internal economy, even in the broader sense -- just a series of obstacles to be surmounted with the right tools.

On the other hand, I think Dwarf Fortress is much more about comparing alternate strategies or investments to weigh the cost and benefit of these, and not just figuring out which tool is the correct one. For example, should I build by the river, or against the mountain? Should I burn my wood to make charcoal, or use it for beds? Should I just use green glass, or go for clear glass? I personally prefer games where there are many ways to overcome the next challenge, and it's about trying to pick the best one for the situation rather than finding the correct one.