Design philosophies that make you rage?

[Roy]

I want to know why smart play is actually a problem. Because that's what Critical Existence Failure + Focus Fire is. Why the fuck should intelligence be punished and stupidity encouraged? That just gets you bullshit like the D&D 3.5 playtesters and their Epic [Fail] Overrunning of golems instead of ya know, smashing them up. And we all know how 3.5 turns out when you have a non zero amount of brain cells involved.

The problem isn't that people focus fire in an unmitigated critical existence failure environment. The problem is that focus fire isn't very interesting tactically, and therefore n unmitigated critical existence failure environment is bad design.

-Username17

And what is the alternative? Force stupidity? Put some sort of condition track, which screws PCs hard, especially the ones expected to be hit a lot while not bothering enemies at all in the long term, as there will always be more things to kill and rob but PCs are supposed to have some lasting value?

Because even if it is 'boring' or 'not interesting tactically' it works, and you of all people know players will do what works, because it's what the system encourages them to do. And from the character's perspective, 'fun' while dueling to the death with the latest Monster of the Week is an unknown concept.

Because your options are Critical Existence Failure, where you are a complete idiot for 'spreading out the pain', regardless of whether it 'sucks' or not. Or, you can do the condition track, which still bones players, especially since most systems are Rocket Tag as is... so in addition to dropping to 30% HP or less in round 1 because one thing attacked you with one auto attack, you now take huge penalties to everything, which means you have been effectively removed from the fight instead of ya know, being able to pull a reversal.

Really, this whole thing from the other side here is coming across like the guys who try to argue 'tactics' in D&D... which basically amount to burn a bunch of actions to trick yourself into being useful, when a simple and free auto attack would be better, and in some cases permanently bone yourself in addition to losing actions via say... breaking your own stuff. Now, I doubt anyone here is trying to channel that sort of idiocy, but the basic reasoning of 'do something different, while thinking it's good but really just to do something different' aka change for the sake of change is exactly the same. Note, this is not the same as arguing tactics. Those are actually worthwhile. Note the use of quotation marks.

[schpeelah]

Dude, what we want is making interesting tactics the smart choice. Since focus fire currently the smart chouce because the game mechanic supports it (not like it's such a good thing IRL or something), we change the mechanic.

If you like that aspect of the game as it is, it's OK, we wont make you change it. However, this discussionis no longer for you, so please leave and don't disrupt it.

... or just reply on the thread's original topic. God, this forum is the Patron Saint of Off-Topic.

[Roy]

Which doesn't answer the question of how you would actually do that, without replacing the problem with a worse problem. Instead it just declares an empty statement.

So, how would you actually change the smart tactics from Focus Fire to something else without introducing the worse problems that stem from condition tracks by design, and thus are immutable parts of condition tracks?

[angelfromanotherpin]

So, how would you actually change the smart tactics from Focus Fire to something else without introducing the worse problems that stem from condition tracks by design, and thus are immutable parts of condition tracks?

Dude, you seriously haven't been paying attention.

I genuinely think something like that can be done for table top, where characters that are "unengaged" can go crazy with running around behind people and such. This encourages people to set up blocking patterns rather than just having everyone gangbang one enemy and then moving on to the next one.

...

You can give out wound penalties, bonuses for being unengaged, easy access to hit point sharing as a healing mechanic, strong zones of control, and so on and so forth.

Where the hell has anyone but you mentioned condition tracks?

[Judging__Eagle]

Do it like morale in Dawn of War. You die when your HP hits 0, but if your morale is fucked, you can't deal any noticeable amounts of damage. As in, a hero unit can't even one-man an enemy squad if his morale is below the breaking point, when normally he'd curb-stomp them.

If your squads have their morale dropped to nothing, you won't lose, but you can't win right now.

Conversely, just because you fucked up your enemies morale doesn't mean you're going to kill them. It just means that they won't be able to kill you.

So, make the "negative" effects only affect Offensive abilities.

Defenses are up at full all the time; special attacks only fuck up enemy offenses. Meaning that even if you "break" a squad of hardcore power armoured Spess Mehrines, you won't kill them with your piece of shit Imperial Gaurdsmen's laser pointers that had a quatro of flamers to do the jorb of breaking enemy moral. Instead you need to use actual offensive abilities that can kill enemies to eliminate opponents. The flamers simply kept the enemy from being able to fight you evenly and possibly kill your team members.

The incentive for this would be to have de-buffs that reduce offensive abilities; which encourages people to apply them to many enemies at once and immediately. Then you bring in the heavies or ranged support.

Having de-buffs reduce the RNG of the target's offense abilities would be good start.

Of course, sometimes you may want characters that can rally broken troops.

[Crissa]

Yeah, this is a serious problem in online gams as well; very few games at all make non focus-fire even a valid option.

Maybe when you're dealing with a group of people in a continuous action game ('real time') part of the 'fun' is trying to get everyone to point at the same target. But that's just not a problem in a turn-based game.

And there are real-world analogies which allow for different tactics than focus-fire. Blocking, morale, suppression, intercede, etc. The question isn't 'why should we take away focus fire?' but 'How do we make these tactics sit at the same level of value?'.

As it stands, most games just don't have mechanics which give rise to those tactics. So we've tossed out some.

I like engaged/unengaged, myself. Better than morale, anyhow. I'm also perfectly okay for 'engaged' to mean 'hit with a fireball', too.

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty2]

Ways of curbing focus fire

Beating a dead horse: Similar to original Final Fantasy, Before anyone acts, everyone declares who they're attacking. Then actions are resolved. If you decided to attack someone that got killed, you still end up stabbing his corpse. Focus fire isn't a great idea because it can potentially lose you a bunch of actions attacking people that are already out of the fight.

Marking System: Similar to 4E, you give people the ability to make themselves the favored target of an enemy, and inflict penalties if the enemy attacks someone else. Unlike 4E, these penalties have to be more meaningful.

Suppression Fire: People who haven't been attacked since their last turn get a bonus to attack, meaning that you generally want someone to try to slow down the opposition.

Wound penalties: If you can reduce the amount of damage your enemies deal by wounding them, you may find it in your best interest to spread the hurt around. This was really prevalent in older editions of shadowrun, where a seriously injured target was looking at a +3 modifier to the target number of any action he took, which was effectively crippling. So it was almost always better to attack someone else instead of finishing him off.

[Roy]

So, how would you actually change the smart tactics from Focus Fire to something else without introducing the worse problems that stem from condition tracks by design, and thus are immutable parts of condition tracks?

Dude, you seriously haven't been paying attention.

I genuinely think something like that can be done for table top, where characters that are "unengaged" can go crazy with running around behind people and such. This encourages people to set up blocking patterns rather than just having everyone gangbang one enemy and then moving on to the next one.

...

You can give out wound penalties, bonuses for being unengaged, easy access to hit point sharing as a healing mechanic, strong zones of control, and so on and so forth.

Where the hell has anyone but you mentioned condition tracks?

Wound penalties = condition track. Bonuses for being unengaged = same thing with different flavor text, as lack of bonus = penalty. Sharing HP just means it doesn't fucking matter who you hit, as you're just zerging the hivemind anyways, and strong zones of control means... enemy can't do anything. Which does not have any bearing on focusing fire or not.

[Cielingcat]

I really, really hate the idea that the only way to balance a game is to have everyone be exactly the same. It is always used to justify a lack of balance, and everyone who says it is supporting imbalance and bad game design.

[Roy]

I really, really hate the idea that the only way to balance a game is to have everyone be exactly the same. It is always used to justify a lack of balance, and everyone who says it is supporting imbalance and bad game design.

One more mark against Final Destination, eh?

[Username17]

Wound penalties = condition track. Bonuses for being unengaged = same thing with different flavor text, as lack of bonus = penalty.

No.

A bonus for not being engaged is very importantly different from a penalty for being injured. Negating a bonus automatically and sensibly does not stack. Also it requires constant maintenance by the opposition but doesn't require them to succeed with any of their attacks.

So in the wound penalties option you fire on each enemy in turn from most to least dangerous until you minimize them as a threat, and then you go back and start taking down enemies. It's focus fire in two stages.
But in the unengaged enemy bonus option you diversify your attacks so that some attack is going towards every enemy who is a credible threat. And the strategy is to try to get the most meaningful attacks onto the same enemy over and over again without leaving enemies unblocked.

It's a completely different tactical landscape. Your characterization of them as the same is completely fucking insane.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

So what happens when you have both options at the same time?

Does the game turn into an episode of Teen Titans or Justice League, where members of each team pair off and fight each other?

Because that sounds totally awesome.

[Crissa]

Yeah, the unengaged bonus will come back whereas wound tracks generally don't. One needs constant maintenance, the other is sticky.

-Crissa

[Roy]

So in essence, you only not Focus Fire as much as the game forces you to, and mostly you just zerg shit with lots of warm bodies just to arbitrarily 'engage' stuff so they can't spam Super Rockets at you.

So, you're still Focusing Fire as much as the game allows you to because that's smart, just now the game can't make up its fucking mind and says doing the exact opposite is smart so you just zerg rush with minions or something to get rid of the auto buff while maintaining your own auto buff.

Same idea, now with 100% more "LEEROY JENKINS!!!"

Also, the other guy is doing the same thing, so mostly you just kinda spam minions at each other for a while until someone gets bored.

So is that "It's time to D-D-D-D-D-D-DUEL!" or "Pikachu, I choose you?"

I suppose adding in random fucking Pokemon, Yugioh, and WoW references is different... but the concept itself is exactly the fucking same. Only the jokes change.

[Username17]

No. It's legitimately not the same. If reducing the number of enemies is your only concern, then Focus Fire is the only answer. If there are other concerns, then you get other options.

Critical Existence Failure + Free Attacks means that you have only one concern: making each next critical existence failure on the opposite side happen as quickly as possible. That makes Focus Fire the one true answer. But it's not the one true answer in, for example, actual combats. So the fact that Focus Fire is so heavily rewarded in these games is a legitimate flaw in the simulation.

I don't understand why you are so butthurt over this fact. Focus Fire isn't how real fights work. There are a number of ways to set up combat so that more realistic zone defenses are used by skirmish groups to achieve victory in small unit confrontations. Many of them are also much more interesting as tactical exercises in addition to generating more realistic battle reports. So failing to use them is obviously bad design.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

So, you're still Focusing Fire as much as the game allows you to because that's smart, just now the game can't make up its fucking mind and says doing the exact opposite is smart so you just zerg rush with minions or something to get rid of the auto buff while maintaining your own auto buff.

What do you mean the game 'can't make up it's mind?' Competing forces that reward different strategies at the same time until a decision or an equilibrium is reached is good game theory... and how a lot of warfare actually works.

[Lago PARANOIA]

NT

[Roy]

Butthurt? You're kidding right? I find this all hilarious. Especially since I started this line of debate looking to see if there were alternatives that were actually different, did not bait and switch with a worse problem, and did not force you to play stupid leading to resentment of the system, ala 4.Fail and its 'Please don't play intelligently'.

I fully expected the elite of this board to have a legit answer in seconds, and that I was merely overlooking it, and thus did not notice it myself. Instead, the board's finest has NOTHING, and in some cases is getting pretty damn upset over it.

Actual combats like... the wounded, near dead guy unloading his automatic weapon on you to kill you anyways?

The longer this goes on without a legit counter, the more entertaining it becomes.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So in essence, you only not Focus Fire as much as the game forces you to, and mostly you just zerg shit with lots of warm bodies just to arbitrarily 'engage' stuff so they can't spam Super Rockets at you.

So, you're still Focusing Fire as much as the game allows you to because that's smart, just now the game can't make up its fucking mind and says doing the exact opposite is smart so you just zerg rush with minions or something to get rid of the auto buff while maintaining your own auto buff.

Roy, the whole reason why we hate Focus Fire is because it ups the lethality of the game a whole lot without really increasing the challenge.

That's fine on the DM end, because they'll still get to do something even if they're done to one guy (and they'll get more soon). It's not cool to have to have a designated victim every fucking combat to the exclusion of everyone else. You might as well roll a dice and tell that person to go play Smash Bros. for awhile.

I mean, despite your lame joke how many series do you really see where when the heroes encounter the Team Evil's mercenaries in the desert or they confront the Legion of Doom in their fortress where the bad guys completely ignore the rest of the party and suicide charge their way at the designated victim in hopes of taking them down with them? None, and you know why? Because it's unfair, it's unfun, it's simulation-breaking, and it's anti-climatic.

D&D right now encourages the goblin king and his entourage to rush past the party's frontline and wail on the squishiest member of the party while completely ignoring what the rest of the party is doing. That's fucking retarded and I don't know why you call that 'good tactics'.

[Username17]

Especially since I started this line of debate looking to see if there were alternatives that were actually different, did not bait and switch with a worse problem, and did not force you to play stupid leading to resentment of the system, ala 4.Fail and its 'Please don't play intelligently'.

Uh... what he hell are you talking about? Making the game mechanics encourage people to lay down suppressive fire to cover for their team mates so that battles will be more realistic and involve more interesting choices does none of those things. It's actually different, the problems it brings in will not necessarily be worse, and it in no way requires stupid play to hold together.

Basically the question has to a first approximation been answered. You are ranting like a crazy man, but the question has been answered. Since in another thread you as much as admitted to having a learning disability I am trying to tread lightly on this point: but are you seriously having a cognitive difficulty with understanding how a suppressive fire system makes tactics more interesting and deep while at the same time making results more realistic or are you just being an asshole? If it's the first, I'm prepared to help. That's what we're here for.

I got sock puppets and everything. I'll draw you a diagram.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

I fully expected the elite of this board to have a legit answer in seconds, and that I was merely overlooking it, and thus did not notice it myself. Instead, the board's finest has NOTHING, and in some cases is getting pretty damn upset over it.

It's not an easy problem to solve for a turn based game. It's really not.

It doesn't happen much in real time scenarios, because you end up wasting a bunch of attacks and leaving yourself open to attack. If you were in a D-Day scenario and your commanding officer ordered your entire squad to focus attack on one random German soldier, you'd think he's nuts. This is because in the time it takes you to all aim your guns and fire, the guy is going to be dead many times over and you've wasted a lot of time.

Turn based games however don't have that problem of taking into account partial actions and aiming time and such. D&D adventurers are able to instantly adapt to a changing battlefield as though you were some Borg collective. The moment an enemy drops, the PCs instantly change targets. Battlefields aren't crazy and chaotic, they're neat and ordered with people fitting into even 5 ft squares.

And that's problematic, because it's not how real battles work at all.

One thing I was considering is having enemies drop at the start of their next turn, instead of immediately upon reaching 0 hp. That way you really wouldn't be sure if you killed an opponent and you may waste shots if your allies want to focus fire.

[Lago PARANOIA]

One thing I was considering is having enemies drop at the start of their next turn, instead of immediately upon reaching 0 hp. That way you really wouldn't be sure if you killed an opponent and you may waste shots if your allies want to focus fire.

Here's a simulation. You have a party of five people in it (A-E) and you're fighting five enemies (1-5). It takes three attacks to down an enemy, though your players don't know that until the party sees that they're dead. The players also don't guess how many attacks it takes to down an enemy. They don't stop attacking until the enemy is dead. You also have Critical Existence Failure. The party has no problem attacking any enemy they want to. To disadvantage the party the most, all of the party acts before they find out if a monster dies or not.

We'll run two simulations. One is where the party pairs off and attacks the monsters until they're dead. The other is where they play Gangbang.

Justice League: 10 attacks.
Gangbang: 10 attacks.

Of course, this assumes that the party playing GB never gets wise and decide to compare notes. If they did and spread out the attack love then they'd suffer fewer enemy attacks than the party playing Justice League.

Looks like you might work on your math a little bit thar.

[Thymos]

Reality sounds like it is rocket tag. You get hit with a bullet, you go down. There is no point to focus fire because the focus fire isn't needed.

To be honest, if we wanted to start make rpgs start being more like real combat, the first thing we need to do is not let players instantly analyze a situation and have as much time as they want to come up with a solution.

I haven't seen games all turned into focus fire, but I'll sometimes throw at the players different monsters from different angles.

If everyone can afford to attack the same target, and it takes all of them attacking to put that target down, they will. There are multiple solutions.

Put pressure the heavy hitters with something that has a damage output disproportionate to it's health (summons). This means they have to spend a turn solving the newly presented problem.

Make it so that everyone isn't needed to put the one guy down. This is the case with rocket tag, or the suggested solution earlier of making everyone tell us before they go what they are doing (I don't like this solution).

Don't let them all attack the same target. If your letting everyone attack the same guy, something has gone wrong. This shouldn't be that easy.

I think it's a problem with the amount of mobility that dnd and rpg's give us. It's nuts how easy it is to get anywhere you want in dnd. This is probably what is causing the problem.

[RandomCasualty2]

Here's a simulation. You have a party of five people in it (A-E) and you're fighting five enemies (1-5). It takes three attacks to down an enemy, though your players don't know that until the party sees that they're dead. The players also don't guess how many attacks it takes to down an enemy. They don't stop attacking until the enemy is dead. You also have Critical Existence Failure. The party has no problem attacking any enemy they want to. To disadvantage the party the most, all of the party acts before they find out if a monster dies or not.

We'll run two simulations. One is where the party pairs off and attacks the monsters until they're dead. The other is where they play Gangbang.

Justice League: 10 attacks.
Gangbang: 10 attacks.

I'm not really sure where you're getting these numbers. If it takes 3 attacks on average to take down a monster in a 5on5 battle, and you're focusing fire, then on average, you're wasting 2 attacks every round. In other words, your total damage is cut to 60% as a price for focusing fire. And that seems like it's a rather harsh price to pay.

Where if you split up and attack in 1on1 pairings, you aren't actually wasting any attacks, because nobody is attacking a foe that may already be dead.

So your efficiency ends up being better if you split up your attacks.

Now obviously, this works better in RLT scenarios instead of padded sumo, because the potential for attacks that are going to be wasted is much higher. If you could adequately predict how much damage each monster can take and know how much damage you've done, then it's a no brainer. However, I'm considering that for a system, monsters would have some kind of saving throw or soak roll, so after you toss out your finger of death, you aren't really sure if it worked or not until the start of the monster's next turn.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm not really sure where you're getting these numbers. If it takes 3 attacks on average to take down a monster in a 5on5 battle, and you're focusing fire, then on average, you're wasting 2 attacks every round.

Where if you split up and attack in 1on1 pairings, you aren't actually wasting any attacks, because nobody is attacking a foe that may already be dead.

But when you focus fire and take down an enemy, you also don't have to worry about that enemy's attacks anymore.

So even though this party wastes attacks, the absolute number of attacks that they take from the enemy is still smaller, because when round 4 starts they don't have to worry about what enemies 1, 2, or 3 are doing. Because they're dead. If people pair off like Justice League then in round 4 enemies 1, 2, and 3 are still fighting.