[Warning: This is going to be long.]
TL;DR: Players want to win. Wins are more satisfying when hard to get. How to make a game that has satisfying wins, but still lets the player win and doesn't drive him/her away?
X-COM(2) and Darkest Dungeon are games with obviously heavy inter-influence, and i'm choosing them to talk about possible approaches to strategic permadeath.
Obviously, a long game can't straight up display a YOU LOSE, START BACK upon a loss: Thereby, mechanics to punish failure, but not cripplingly so, are needed.
One very important point to make straight out is that, in reality, what matters isn't the actual possibility of failure, but rather the perception of that.
Darkest Dungeon, like Dark Souls brilliantly did before it, plays it's card very, very straight: This is a hard game, and you will lose. You will die.
The implicit meaning behind that is: Failure is expected. If you 'win', you're defying expectations, not complying to them.
This is accomplished, first and foremost, thematically: "Dark" in the name, proud of being difficult, and desperate characters are a staple.
XCOM is much subtler than that: While the premise is, storywise, an unwinnable situation - it's a "normal" unwinnable, the kind games throw at you every day of the week and twice on sundays.
The fact that you can actually have setbacks, and lose, doesn't quite kick in until the first soldier death. In that moment, you understand that the game isn't fucking around, and will kick your ass if you're not careful.
XCOM creates additional tension by pretending you can get into a total loss situation, which is actually pretty unrealistic - especially in xcom2, and especially after the first two months.
[Section 2: Difficulty Curve]
In this regard, it's very important to note one thing: Players like winning.
It seems obvious, but it can get out of focus. Players like to win: CPU enemies exist, ultimately, to be defeated. Difficult enemies do not exist to make the player lose: They exist to make the eventual victory more meaningful by creating a expectation of failure.
Achievements aren't compared against nothingness: Players are happy when they exceed their own expectations, and unhappy when they fall short of them.
Proper 'hard' games, by creating very low expectations - that is, telling the player they will fail - make eventual victory more meaningful.
The 'combat' gameplay of the two games is pretty hard to compare, except for one fact: You can lose missions, and losing missions will set you back.
Losing missions, however, set you back in two very different ways:
- Darkest Dungeon slows you down, but ultimately you know that you'll make it - There's no failure state. It just means more grinding.
- XCOM doesn't let you grind back up. Ever. This is a train and you can't stop it - only steer. Failure will not only slow you down, but will have lasting effects beyond the loss of what you brought it.
On the surface, it may seem XCOM's system is much superior - it provides just as much, if not more, tension - but doesn't trigger as much grinding to get back up.
However, it has the very harsh side-effect of capping the difficulty. If the difficulty assumes no failures, any major failure can actually lead to a failure state - one that actually happens, and not just the threat of it.
If, on the other hand, the difficulty assumes a non-zero amount of failures, not failing will mean the game is undertuned, and as victories snowball into other victories, the player will snowball into making the game trivial or near so.
Which is what happens in XCOM.
Darkest Dungeon, instead, is free to make the later game as hard as it wants: If the player failed, s/he can just grind back up until s/he's ready.
There'd be a third option - Pretending there's a penalty, and lying to the player about it, making the penalty irrelevant under the hood. This can be optimal, but lying to the player is much like a bluff - if the player discovers that the game is auto-adjusting it's difficulty, the sense of accomplishment and expectation of failure 'hard' games worked so hard to build is immediately shattered, and can never be gained back.
It can also mean the optimal gameplay path is losing on purpose, which is extremely unfun.
-
One specific way in which the punishment is delivered by not going into hurting the player's gameplay is through attachment.
You nurtured that soldier, you knew the name, the quirks, you decided what it did. You were responsible, and it died on your watch..
In that, XCOM and DD employ similar tools:
XCOM has a very complex aesthetic customization system. This isn't gameplay relevant, but creates very real attachment in some players.
DD doesn't have that, and supplies "personality" through an array of "Quirks" - minor gameplay differences, which soldiers can get and lose at will.
In addition to that, both games employ extensive RPG elements.
XCOM's has the flaw of being completely useless on players that don't care for aesthetic customization, but doesn't ask anything of the player beyond the effort to set them up.
DD creates a system where choosing the party optimally requires a lot of setup, which there can be 25 soldiers in a roster and 10 quirks per soldier, a lot of which are extremely situational and extremely strong\debilitating in their specific situation.
This is undue mechanical complexity for a mechanic that's fundamentally out of the players' control (Albeit it can be curbed through the Sanitarium), in a game that already asks a lot of setup of the player. On a large enough roster, most players will just go "Eh, fuck it" and ignore completely the system, reducing it to a minor annoyance.
-
Both games employ a strategic layer, and with it, RPG elements.
Both are extremely relevant, and definitely cannot be ignored.
However, Darkest Dungeon focuses on balance, while XCOM focuses on discovery.
There's inherent fun in discovering new things: They make you rethink approaches, and provide novelty. XCOM knows this very well, and doesn't tell you what's happening before you reach it: Upgrades, skills, facilities and enemies are all hidden or vague until you unlock them, and can cause massive differences in play. (Or break the game completely, see: Mimic Beacon.)
The approach is risky, and i don't think vanilla XCOM, much less vanilla XCOM2, sees it pay off as much as it should. However, Long War proved to us it can do great things.
Darkest Dungeon doesn't really provide you with anything: All actual choices are provided either at start, or anyhow within the first 10% of the game, and from there on out only enemy design and increasing difficulty will challenge your assumptions.
In my opinion, this is a major failure of Darkest Dungeon, which has lead to the need of very gimmicky trial-based boss gameplay to keep things novel, and for a increasingly difficult curve to keep it challenging.
TL;DR: Players want to win. Wins are more satisfying when hard to get. How to make a game that has satisfying wins, but still lets the player win and doesn't drive him/her away?
X-COM(2) and Darkest Dungeon are games with obviously heavy inter-influence, and i'm choosing them to talk about possible approaches to strategic permadeath.
Obviously, a long game can't straight up display a YOU LOSE, START BACK upon a loss: Thereby, mechanics to punish failure, but not cripplingly so, are needed.
One very important point to make straight out is that, in reality, what matters isn't the actual possibility of failure, but rather the perception of that.
Darkest Dungeon, like Dark Souls brilliantly did before it, plays it's card very, very straight: This is a hard game, and you will lose. You will die.
The implicit meaning behind that is: Failure is expected. If you 'win', you're defying expectations, not complying to them.
This is accomplished, first and foremost, thematically: "Dark" in the name, proud of being difficult, and desperate characters are a staple.
XCOM is much subtler than that: While the premise is, storywise, an unwinnable situation - it's a "normal" unwinnable, the kind games throw at you every day of the week and twice on sundays.
The fact that you can actually have setbacks, and lose, doesn't quite kick in until the first soldier death. In that moment, you understand that the game isn't fucking around, and will kick your ass if you're not careful.
XCOM creates additional tension by pretending you can get into a total loss situation, which is actually pretty unrealistic - especially in xcom2, and especially after the first two months.
[Section 2: Difficulty Curve]
In this regard, it's very important to note one thing: Players like winning.
It seems obvious, but it can get out of focus. Players like to win: CPU enemies exist, ultimately, to be defeated. Difficult enemies do not exist to make the player lose: They exist to make the eventual victory more meaningful by creating a expectation of failure.
Achievements aren't compared against nothingness: Players are happy when they exceed their own expectations, and unhappy when they fall short of them.
Proper 'hard' games, by creating very low expectations - that is, telling the player they will fail - make eventual victory more meaningful.
The 'combat' gameplay of the two games is pretty hard to compare, except for one fact: You can lose missions, and losing missions will set you back.
Losing missions, however, set you back in two very different ways:
- Darkest Dungeon slows you down, but ultimately you know that you'll make it - There's no failure state. It just means more grinding.
- XCOM doesn't let you grind back up. Ever. This is a train and you can't stop it - only steer. Failure will not only slow you down, but will have lasting effects beyond the loss of what you brought it.
On the surface, it may seem XCOM's system is much superior - it provides just as much, if not more, tension - but doesn't trigger as much grinding to get back up.
However, it has the very harsh side-effect of capping the difficulty. If the difficulty assumes no failures, any major failure can actually lead to a failure state - one that actually happens, and not just the threat of it.
If, on the other hand, the difficulty assumes a non-zero amount of failures, not failing will mean the game is undertuned, and as victories snowball into other victories, the player will snowball into making the game trivial or near so.
Which is what happens in XCOM.
Darkest Dungeon, instead, is free to make the later game as hard as it wants: If the player failed, s/he can just grind back up until s/he's ready.
There'd be a third option - Pretending there's a penalty, and lying to the player about it, making the penalty irrelevant under the hood. This can be optimal, but lying to the player is much like a bluff - if the player discovers that the game is auto-adjusting it's difficulty, the sense of accomplishment and expectation of failure 'hard' games worked so hard to build is immediately shattered, and can never be gained back.
It can also mean the optimal gameplay path is losing on purpose, which is extremely unfun.
-
One specific way in which the punishment is delivered by not going into hurting the player's gameplay is through attachment.
You nurtured that soldier, you knew the name, the quirks, you decided what it did. You were responsible, and it died on your watch..
In that, XCOM and DD employ similar tools:
XCOM has a very complex aesthetic customization system. This isn't gameplay relevant, but creates very real attachment in some players.
DD doesn't have that, and supplies "personality" through an array of "Quirks" - minor gameplay differences, which soldiers can get and lose at will.
In addition to that, both games employ extensive RPG elements.
XCOM's has the flaw of being completely useless on players that don't care for aesthetic customization, but doesn't ask anything of the player beyond the effort to set them up.
DD creates a system where choosing the party optimally requires a lot of setup, which there can be 25 soldiers in a roster and 10 quirks per soldier, a lot of which are extremely situational and extremely strong\debilitating in their specific situation.
This is undue mechanical complexity for a mechanic that's fundamentally out of the players' control (Albeit it can be curbed through the Sanitarium), in a game that already asks a lot of setup of the player. On a large enough roster, most players will just go "Eh, fuck it" and ignore completely the system, reducing it to a minor annoyance.
-
Both games employ a strategic layer, and with it, RPG elements.
Both are extremely relevant, and definitely cannot be ignored.
However, Darkest Dungeon focuses on balance, while XCOM focuses on discovery.
There's inherent fun in discovering new things: They make you rethink approaches, and provide novelty. XCOM knows this very well, and doesn't tell you what's happening before you reach it: Upgrades, skills, facilities and enemies are all hidden or vague until you unlock them, and can cause massive differences in play. (Or break the game completely, see: Mimic Beacon.)
The approach is risky, and i don't think vanilla XCOM, much less vanilla XCOM2, sees it pay off as much as it should. However, Long War proved to us it can do great things.
Darkest Dungeon doesn't really provide you with anything: All actual choices are provided either at start, or anyhow within the first 10% of the game, and from there on out only enemy design and increasing difficulty will challenge your assumptions.
In my opinion, this is a major failure of Darkest Dungeon, which has lead to the need of very gimmicky trial-based boss gameplay to keep things novel, and for a increasingly difficult curve to keep it challenging.
