Player Agency

[@zeyogoat]

"If you actually meet someone face-to-face, and you literally cannot kill them, I *hate* that." XD Happy New Year Tim! Your insightful expert content is a pleasure.

[@TheAlison1456]

commentary there's nothing else this mystery lootbox could be spreading CharlatanWonder's good message

[@TheLoveYeti]

Every single one of Tim's videos is absolute gold.

[@TheJovian16]

10:30 Wow, if only someone could tell that to Todd Howard. Imagine if in Starfield you never got to interact with the unkillable bigwigs directly but had to talk to them over the phone or space-Discord or something and had to persuade the secretaries that answered their phones that you should be talking to them. At least it would've been a germ of originality in one of the safest games of all time.

[@mafuletrekkie]

I still remember playing Morrowind back in the day when I accidentally killed an NPC... and got a message saying I could keep playing the game if I wanted to but the world was doomed. Was instantly hooked, would doom the world again.

[@MercenaryTau]

"Junk Items" brought up some old memories playing Elder Scrolls Online. I was storing Important items in the Junk Tab to keep my inventory organized. Well, I had downloaded an inconsequential mod that also had an unadvertised feature that would sell off your entire Junk Category whenever you visited a vendor; automatically and unprompted. Now, there were individual mods that did this, the mod author himself had a separate mod for this, but for some reason, he thought it would be helpful to include the feature in an unrelated mod and not make any mention of it whatsoever in the description. (I asked the author, who confirmed this) It was a while until I noticed and I was livid when I did but it was already too late. Sorry, I just needed to get that off my chest, I'm better now.

[@filthplanet]

The fact that there exists a channel where one of if not THE greatest RPG designer can share his opinions and insight on game design is insane. I love KZbin.

[@marcbraun5342]

I'm mainly a fighting game player, who incidentally also loves this channel, and we have a different term for that, since the game loop is pretty straight forward: player expression. If a game allows a lot of player expression, playing a character in a unique way that can be distunguished from other players who use the same character, allows experimentation, figuring out new combo routes and so on, building up a style, that's player expression.

[@pacnano4559]

“Tell me you’re disappointed with Fallout 3 without telling me you’re disappointed with Fallout 3”

[@DarkBuddhist]

Hi Tim. Just wanted to say Fallout defined part of my childhood and I love it and admire your work ever since. I was like 9-10 years old and was literally learning to read english (as a native czech) while playing Fallout. If I may a question, I was wondering if, given the chance, would you like to participate in development of Fallout 5, even as a advisor. Thank you!

[@philbertius]

Really interesting to hear an alternate perspective on this. I see the appeal of agency in its own right (e.g. in Star Control II when you convince a race of Soviet rhinoceroses to change their personality to one of four wacky options), but I usually struggle to enjoy games that lean into this too heavily. When I think about it, I think these are my reasons: 1) Overwhelming complexity. More choices create more uncertainty, which strains my trust in the designer. Past experience has taught me to be *extremely* cautious when building a character (thanks Diablo II), or that choices are ultimately meaningless. Game design/mechanics should do more to reassure the player to confidently pick things, imo. Dwarf Fortress is a great example of this, with "Losing is Fun" as a mantra. 2) Dilution of quality. This argument is made pretty often, and in Skyrim's case of procgen it's easy to see why. There will always be a tradeoff here, but I think it's sufficient to accept that there are several optima of fun along this curve, and in order to realize them, nothing should be done half-heartedly. Again, I see DF and survival games more generally as one extreme end of this. 3) Novelty has been lost. Game design that hyper-focuses on player agency has been around for a long time (e.g. Oblivion, Half Life 2), so the sheen of novelty has been lost, and the problems have been magnified. 4) More agency = more realistic aesthetic, usually. I can see why these two things are correlated, but I'm not fond of gritty realism, personally. If my feelings on this are relatable, then I think there's actually a few solutions to these problems. E.g. I tend to believe that the player's *feeling* of agency is more important than the actual thing, and our view as game designers is more top-down than the player's ever will be. We complain about "non-choices" like the dialogue options in games like *Pokemon: Legends Arceus*, but the truth is that without even those, the game would be less interesting. Meanwhile, the ability to change the overarching plot of a game might sound cool in the abstract, but because it's such a macroscopic thing, I think it's harder to appreciate. (Probably true in life as well!) Of course, I don't think the Pokemon example is sufficiently good, but it indicates that there's a higher "bang for buck" design space that isn't nearly as costly (and thus quality straining) as a completely dynamic overarching plot. E.g. we can restrict player decisions to a smaller scope of the story and avoid those massive quantity multipliers inherent to branching higher nodes of the plot tree, while sacrificing relatively little agency. Or instead of relying on a fractal tree of finite choices for the plot, each branch a rabbit hole of complexity, we can make the tree shallower but wider, and allow multiple iterations over the tree to experience those branches you missed before. For example: * The game has multiple endings, which aren't too difficult to unlock (Chrono Trigger, Hatoful Boyfriend). * A character has multiple short lines they say dependent on thresholds of a continuous value (the ex-beggar turned banker in Zelda: Majora's Mask). While these are instances of trees of depth=1, it's easy to stick a lot of these in a game compared to even one tree of depth=2, and the game shines much more brightly for it imo.

[@Kulimar]

It would be interesting to hear about your experiences training up more junior designers and programmers. What are some of your approaches to onboarding less experienced members to a project?

[@thatradiogeek]

Everything you talked about a game doing or not doing in this one, a different game came to mind that fits that exact description. Well done.

[@arcan762]

I too like well thought out and purposeful player agency, but I find a lot of games that overemphasise their player agency and brag about how you can "Go wherever you want! Do whatever you want!" easily just devolve into wandering around aimlessly and feeling like I'm having to design my own adventure, which as a consumer is kind of what I'm paying the designers to do, and there are many very linear/restrictive games where I can tell that the budget was spent making a tightly crafted experience with a very clear direction and outcomes and where I as the player can tune out at the end of the day and just enjoy the ride without having to think about every decision I make, that I much prefer over player agency driven games done poorly.

[@stuartmorley6894]

Different people like different types of games. Nothing wrong with liking a game where you are totally open, or totally scripted, or in the middle. A good game is a good game, there are different ways to achieve that. I love games with loads of agency but my favourite game this year was Alan Wake 2 which has set protagonists and most of it is scripted.

[@Anubis1101]

100% on this. Games exist so we can directly insert ourselves into an experience. Linear games with limited player agency can be little different than a movie or tv show. I won't go so far as to say they shouldn't exist, but the time I spend on a game is often directly proportionate to the amount of player agency. It's even worse when a game PRETENDS to be free and open, but constantly restricts your options and limits the way the game can react (*cough* Starfield). To me, that's even worse than a completely linear game that gave no illusions about what it was trying to do.

[@TheGenericCanadian]

Hi Tim From a programming perspective, how do you structure player/world state in a way that makes keeping track of all these player decisions manageable? How would a designer/non programmer interact with that system when iterating on the game?

[@TheAlison1456]

Josh Sawyer shows and comments on that somewhat in his video about either Tyranny or Pillars of Eternity.

[@daniel.holbrook]

Enjoyable and insightful listen as always. One thing I personally really dislike is when developers 'play coy' with player agency, flashing the illusion that the player should be able to do things or make decisions which they can't. I'd rather have lower agency, properly telegraphed to the player, with expectations to match. The 'Hand of the Designer' as you describe it is really important to my enjoyment of a role-playing game

[@delicious_seabass]

I definitely like some games with a ton of player agency, but I feel like too many games are about making everything open world and generated, which gives players a lot of agency, but ends up feeling bland and repetitive. Older games like Mario and Zelda have far less agency, but are immensely fun since they focus on guided obstacles and challenges. I suppose the agency in those games is about choosing how to use the movement mechanics to overcome those things, but its still a far cry from games today letting you choose every little aspect. Eventually the player ends up hitting a wall because the devs can only add so much. Starfield is a really good example.

[@The-cyber-imbiber]

It's funny how designers taken out of context sound like psychopaths. "If you meet somebody face to face but cannot kill them... I hate that."

[@DarkBloodbane]

Thanks for the insight Tim! It makes me think how to design game system which allows big agency as big as possible to players. One thing that I know is not to have story which governs the game or player's journey in the game.

[@FerreusDeus]

I'm writing a book about sandbox style Game Mastering and have a chapter on player agency... "Most directly put, a player's agency is their control over their character's actions in the world. It refers to the degree of control or decision-making power that players have over their characters' actions and choices within the game world. It includes the ability of the player to change the outcome of the story with their decisions."

[@TheXentios]

At 10:40, That was a slap for Starfield!

[@ExVersion83]

Cyberpunk has a lot of that. I played 1st time in December, I could not believe how many places just don’t allow you to shoot/aim or even just have the gun in your hands. It happens outside too, if you are close enough to certain entrances or person, just don’t make any sense, totally break immersion.

[@YouTubdotCub]

I find myself in agreement with you very often, but this video maybe more than any other so far!

[@cameronvanhook7388]

I'm glad to hear you talking about this - Its something I've thought about a lot. In addendum I'd say 'player agency' goes hand in hand with 'intentionality.' As Clint Hocking at Ubisoft put it, "Intentionality is the ability of the player to devise [their] own meaningful goals through [their] understanding of the game dynamics and to formulate meaningful plans to achieve them using information and resources provided by the game.” --- or in other words, In order to have agency, players must know when and how they are making a choice, and have a reasonable idea or expectation for the outcome/ consequences.

[@cameronvanhook7388]

-- For an example of a game that impedes player agency, in Elder Ring (a great game which I sunk 300+ hours in) I felt like I was constantly being robbed of my agency when events would take place elsewhere in the world that seemed to have little to no correlation to my actions. I'd speak to one person and another person somewhere else would die.

[@eddiebreeg3885]

What a lovely way to start off the new year

[@hampusgranberg6382]

Oh Tim, you're preeching to the choire now, hell yes! This is why everytime I see a new AAA Roleplaying Game, I feel disappointment, and longing for the old-school era, where not everything was about cutting edge graphical cutscenes, premade characters, simplified and boring dialogue trees, action-oriented light RPG elements, and streamlined stories with as much handholding as possible. Not saying that there aren't good or interesting RPGs in today's day and age, or that even this specific lighter RPG genre is bad with every iteration, but it certainly doesn't provide the same juicy agency you had back in the day with games like Morrowind, Fable, or the Fallout Games.

[@Milkyway_Squid]

So fun fact with the reverse pickpocketing thing, while I almost never use it for killing, I find it often useful as a way to give allies weapons and ammo when I can't do it directly

[@jsullivan2112]

Great video, as always, thanks Tim! definitely prefer agency but I love a good linear game too! Tbf essential (unkillable) NPCs in Oblivion and Skyrim were a necessary last minute fix for their Radiant AI. NPCs with a mind of their own were killing important quest givers and breaking all the quests. This was their way to fix that. Granted it was fine for Oblivion so they could ship it, but could have been changed for Skyrim. I definitely prefer games with consequences, which is what I love about Elden Ring and all of FromSoft's games in that style. You kill someone, they're gone. Have fun!

[@FlorescentBrainwave]

Mr Cain I'm about 10 hours into "The Outer Worlds" and I absolutely love the game that you, Leonard and your whole team have created. It feels like a game I would play in my dream; everything about if from its Role playing, crafting systems, dialogue and gun play are perfect to the point where I'm almost suspicious? is this game real???!??

[@wacky.racoon]

I'm on my second play through because of Tim's KZbin series, and playing it with a new set of ears and eyes is amazing.

[@Jamespdawg]

Happy new year Tim, and everyone on this channel. Has anyone else been inspired to make a game by Tim and his videos? I have, and 2024 is going to be the year I dive into it. There's no time like the present.

[@colin-campbell]

Both Tim and Jason Hall over at Pirate Software have been huge influences over my decision to pick up game development as a hobby

[@Jamespdawg]

@@colin-campbell What are you working on? Anything you'd like to share?

[@arcan762]

I wouldn't say inspired by, but these videos certainly have helped to give me a more structured process to think through ideas to make design easier and more reliable, instead of the usual indie game dev approach I'm used to of just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.

[@lrinfi]

Good luck! :)

[@nathandanner4030]

Thank you for talking about this topic...maybe you can elaborate on this in the future. I was trying to explain to some nice folks on the Steam Forums why it was a bad idea for the writers of a certain game to create a transition into act 3 of a game where your character gets bushwacked by a very obivous trap and taken somewhere against their will and tortured. Even made to say things against their 'alignment' to advance the story. There are some dialogue responses in the torture scene that will outright end the game if you say them. Many people were complaining about this transition since Beta and they still went with it with predictable results. I was thinking about the Prison Island in Arcanum of Steamworks and how the player voluntarily goes there and how many different solutions to getting the 'mc guffin' for the dwarf area. i was trying to telll people 'look you can do things differently and get simular result while letting players play their characters the way they want.'

[@StavrosNikolaou]

Happy New Year Tim! Best wishes and a healthy 2024 for you and your family! Great video as always and a strong start to 2024!! You often mentioned in this video about the deliberate hand of the designer but only briefly touched upon emergent gameplay and agency. I find the latter particularly interesting since it is more systemically driven. Can you say more about other systems (like fallout's pickpocket system based on vendor interface) that offer such emergent opportunities? Also what can RPGs learn, if anything, from other genres where such elements are more prevalent e.g. Sim-likes, colony simulators (e.g. dwarf fortress) with respect to enhancing agency? Thanks again for your video! Here's to an amazing 2024 🎉. Have a great day! 😊

[@TimvanderLeeuw]

Not having a character creator and not allowing any character creation options can be a story telling decision. You may have a specific story you want to tell about a certain character in the world, which would not fit with character creation easily. Of course after that point your quest design can still go many ways in the story you tell, how much you restrict player agency and choice & consequences. And the games of Larian show us that you can have fixed characters in the world with their story, and still combine that with giving the player the option of creating their own character playing along the predefined characters. Unkillable NPCs can be quite a blight on the game indeed -- imagine, you can kill dragons and save the town, otherwise helpless against these almighty dragons! But the townguards are always too strong for you and will always overpower you despite them being near helpless against that dragon...

[@birdsephone]

Huh I never thought of a lot of these things. I loved in Fallout that you could do stuff like that, esp with pickpocketing. For dialogue, its nice to hear some of these things affirmed, I have had to walk away from games because the dialogue being so unrelatable to me genuinely enraged me, because of how good of a job they did investing me in the plot early game. I loved the ending of Fallout 1, and how it utilized a lot of the concepts you lay down here.

[@TimvanderLeeuw]

Best Wishes for 2024! 🥂 🎇

[@karamzing]

Conspicuously unkillable NPCs are bothersome because they seem unsystemic, like the initial Grand Vision didn't account for the inevitability and now there's "if(conditionWeDidntAnticipate) { applyPlaster(); }" written somewhere in the codebase. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it also suggest a mental gap between the designer and the player, where the designer expects the player to appreciate the designer's creation more than they expect them to play it. The player is there to validate the designer and should learn to behave themselves. When the player eventually misbehaves, the if statement is added to guard the design against the player's grubby little hands that always break all the designer's toys.

[@OpenedDiscussion]

This videos sums up very well my frustration with Bethesda fallout 😥

[@TheSocratesofAthens]

Good arguments against Mass Effect 3's ending"s".

[@ButtorsGaming]

Fortnite and the RPG riding was legendary.

[@adam908]

BG3 looming like a happy shadow over this video.

[@ExVersion83]

Happy new year everyone! I wish you all a healthy and productive year!

[@lepersonnage371]

Tim, have you played Kingdome Come Deliverance? Would be interesting to hear what you think about it's RPG aspect, because it really allows for a lot of player choice and also has an immersive sim aspect to it (for example if you want your character to learn how to read, you go to the literate guy in the town, he gives you a book, you manually read it and tell him what it's about, then he gives a book on latin to you and you have to tell him what it's about, etc.), and that approach to learning every aspect of the game in KCD.

[@wacky.racoon]

That's a great question! One thing that gets in the way of all of that for me is the combat. I had to spend a lot of time to master it and was able to get the full experience but I think a lot of people put it down because of the difficulty.

[@cerealexperiments8189]

I just learnt that you worked on Stonekeep. That was my first video game!

[@Jaqinta]

Hello Mr. Tim Cain thanks for this wonderful topic ,this is i think one of the best features that your games have . You can play differently and get different emotions while you playing the game repeatedly . My question is not related on this topic but what you thinking about recent rumours that is now talking about that , the upcoming AAA or high budget games might released with expensive price tags , like rather than usual 60 dollars , the rumour is might be on 100 dollars or more ?

[@mordicai4296]

Love you Tim! Happy new year! 🎉❤

[@BADC0FFEE]

Question for a possible video: in your long career which are the games or works in other media that you perceived like a watershed moment? Things that influenced you so much that you feel you were a different designer before and after

[@christopherr.561]

As a game designer, that works on products, sometimes years before others know about it, how hard is it to keep that to yourself? Who can you talk to about it? Is there a formal NDA or is it just understood? What happens when information gets out, is there a internal mole hunt :) How does having to keep the development secret impact your social life or does it have any impact on the game?

[@rusty_from_earth9577]

What do you think of dice roll skill checks vs hard “you have x amount skill so you automatically pass”? I know dice roll checks can encourage save scumming but do you think there is a way to minimize that by making failure compelling?

[@ashleywilliams4896]

Two words mate, Disco Elysium

[@Nojii1]

Hey Tim, love your channel and everything you’ve done over the years. Fallout 1 rules :)

[@Validifyed]

Related to this, I would be interested in hearing your opinions on respecing. Some games let you respec perks but not attributes (ie.. Outer Worlds, Cyberpunk), while others do everything possible to ensure that all aspects of your character can be changed at any point (ie Elden Ring, Skyrim).

[@glr]

What do you think about developers patching games after it is revealed that players discovered agency that wasn't intended? Or on patching games in general? Is the developer "right" to patch non-bug issues that are revealed to veer from their "vision?"

[@richardgreen3068]

Outstanding

[@8Paul7]

When making AAA game with large budget, it can get very expensive trying to support "do anything, kill anyone" kind of design. Sure you can figure out a sneaky "cheat" way out of it, like in New Vegas where you can kill everyone except "Yes Man" robot, because when you kill him he redownloads himself into another robotic body, and so his unending existence lets you finish the game even with everyone else dead. But this approach is not feasible in many other games (like medieval RPG, e.g. Kingdom Come, you cannot have unkillable robot). If you are trying to tell a story, some NPCs must be either unkillable, or killable, but then with the game being unfinishable (like Morrowind did it, displaying that "stay in the doomed world you created" message). Because you cannot write a story that has infinite branches based on whoever the player decides to kill. Generally though, I agree that more player agency, the better.

[@lrinfi]

"When making AAA game with large budget" -- I wouldn't think budget would be an issue in that event, especially when developers with less (or no) budgets, historically, both could and did.

[@Azel954]

great video tim.

[@Pedone_Rosso]

I once dropped a game not much past half way through, a game which in principle should have had all the elements of a very enjoyable experience for my personal taste. The reason I dropped it, was deliberate player agency stripping by design. Which was, in my opinion, used as a "story telling" device, or more precisely a "specific feeling inducing" story telling device, that I think was at the very base of the whole game's original design. This game (I won't name it, because it invites tiresome comment-section wars) is linear, an action kind of game. So it should have been perfectly normal that the main events of the plot were scripted and not decided by the player. But the main character kept facing forks in their path and every single time they chose the "wrong" most player-frustrating path available. I mean I played an action section of the game, then there is a cut scene, and at the end of it the main character decides to do thing 1, when they should have done thing 2, when both options are actually and explicitly exposed during the cut scene itself. And then I'm forced to go and do the action section based on a decision that made no sense to me. That kept happening all the way through the story (or at least the half of it I played). I consequently went online and "spoiled" the rest of the story for me, just to see what was that all about. This whole-game permeating mechanism seemed, at least to me, to be meant as some kind of pedagogical moral lesson that the writer/designer wanted to force upon players via emotional stress. Your character is forced to do "wrong" things in the game by their compelling but seemingly nonsensical state of mind, and as a reflection the game itself forces choices on you as a player that make you go "wait, what? That makes no sense, I don't want to do that!". And the consequences are the expected spiral of self destruction that such behavior "deserves". Now, I see how this can titillate some writer's imagination. Most likely it was thought of as a very "original" way to make use of the video game mean in order to convey a moral lesson (or the moral of a story if you will) at a visceral/emotional level. But it just resulted into a really bad game to play for me, and I got nothing but disappointment from it, personally. (Some players loved the game in question, btw, possibly just because of this same mechanism for which I, and some other players, hated it) Thanks for your videos!

[@charliek5964]

Happy New Year!

[@dukenukem8381]

Hello Tim, how did you came up with circular cog vault door design. Thank you.

[@DamianReloaded]

Detroit Become Human, while having the simplest possible game mechanics, allows the player to continuously make choices that affect the outcome of the game and the role of your and other characters. It has 85 endings.

[@Bloodyshinta1]

was just playing Panzer Dragoon, a game with probably no player agency beyond getting better at it lmao. But it's such a beautiful spectacle of visual and audio design mixed with expertly crafted action gameplay with super simple controls but depth to improve. I wonder what the balance between that and a deep rpg with tons of player agency is.

[@RaifSeverence]

I'd argue the player does have agency in Panzer Dragoon. It's that player agency is different depending on the type of game you're playing. The player agency described in the video is largely associated with RPGs. Panzer Dragoon is, I believe a shoot em up. (Never plated it, so I would t know)

[@Bloodyshinta1]

@@RaifSeverence can you elaborate because you didn't really add anything to the topic and by your own admission you haven't even played the game.

[@LinoWalker]

I've always had mixed feelings about player agency. While I agree with your points, as well as similar points expressed by others, I've also never really found much satisfaction from huge RPGs and open-ended games. The more open and reactive to choice a game is, the more the illusion is broken for me and thr less immersed I feel in the world. I've never made a character in a video game that I've liked - either visually or narratively - more than a character made by a team of artists and narrative designers. I've never had - or seen - an emergent experience I've liked more than a setpiece made by a team of talented developers and storytellers. My favourite games are stuff like Blade of Darkness, Half-Life, Max Payne (1 and 2, the Warcraft 3 campaigns.... My favourite RPG is the Witcher series (especially the third game), which are notorious for giving you next to no leeway when it comes to character builds and role playing (you're pretty much confined to playing Geralt as a cynical, stoic badass - something some people found issue with). I guess we just look for fundamentally different things when it comes to video games. Anyway, this was still a very good and well systematized video. I like how you restrained yourself from condemning more linear playstyles, the way other creators usually do when talking about player agency - you just acknowledged that it's a different design choice, rather than something that's fundamentally "wrong". Best Wishes for 2024 - may you have great health and a lot of fun :)

[@lrinfi]

"I've never made a character in a video game that I've liked - either visually or narratively - more than a character made by a team of artists and narrative designers." -- Great point. I've often heard players say they "just don't have the imagination" to come up with a compelling character to play themselves and rely on the developers to provide them with one to play. I'm sure they do have the imagination, whether or not it's been exercised in a while, to "write" their own characters, essentially, so I must admit I don't quite get that unless predesigned/prewritten characters have just come to be so commonplace and expected given the number of video games that do provide such a character, e.g. Geralt of Rivia or Arthur Morgan, which the player can only "nudge" this way or that over the course of the game. RPGs, especially, sit uncomfortably between two different forms of media: cinematic and literary. That's why I so often feel they've yet to really come into their own except in those rare instances when developer intent and player agency mesh all but perfectly. Is it a fluke when they do? Is there some skill involved on the part of developers and players of RPGs that may have become a little rusty over the years via nonuseage?

[@mindofmyown8597]

Hi Tim, Its Me, Remi. Understandbly you give advice about rpgs and types of games youve worked on. Howoever, It would be really interesting to hear your opiiniongs on adjcent game gengres like APGS (IE diablo4, POE, Grim Dawn)

[@mrteco4236]

Nice video!

[@aleccrisman]

Are there any limits on player agency that aren't related to either budget or time? I'm thinking of quests with multiple outcomes, which then affect other quests going forward, and the kind of exponential growth of potential story paths than can occur from this. Obviously the most common restrictions are just development time and money, but even setting that aside, is there an upper bound for how much complexity players can handle? How much information you can communicate to the player? And how do you know when you're hitting that threshold?

[@EriYT]

Morrowind still holds up the best of the Elder Scrolls games to me because it had the most player agency. I think over the years they sacrificed agency for presentation value and it lost something it never got back.

[@johncole4963]

Hey Tim, im working on a Fallout Online modification and I was wondering if you could expand on this video and talk about adding player agency into an MMO and how that differs, given your experience at carbine.

[@pnutz_2]

"here's an ability/gameplay feature that lets you do something, but bosses are immune because -someone minmaxed in a game about minmaxing and it trivialised a fight and upset us- we said so"

[@funnyhatguy]

Hi Tim your games and crpgs in general are really great in giving players the necessary agency for doing the quests the way they intended. However not all the time . sometimes there is a random encounter that you cant run away from and if you want to play a "talk your way out of conflict" type of character there is always some type of enemy with no sort of intelligence meaning you cant deal with them via charisma so your best chance would be to sneak past them which again isn't an option in most random encounters now, this is not a criticism of your work in any way in fact your games are the reason we gamers today even consider a charisma build a valid option But my question is why high budget crpgs( especially compared to your games ) like bg3 or poe2 still struggle with the concept of talking your way out of the situation and will always force you into combat scenarios one way or another (and sometimes when the fight is about to begin there is a dialogue option saying somthing like "cant we just talk like civilized people?" And the other guy answers "nah lol") even tho indie crpgs like age of decadence or colony ship by Iron tower studios prove that you in fact can make a game whiteout a single mandatory combat section is it because developers believe talking your way out of everything would be potentially boring for a 50+ hours playthrough? ( if that's the case then why not make more engaging speech interactions ?) or is it just hard to implement?(which honestly makes sense)

[@CainOnGames]

First off, my goals of providing multiple solutions for quests is less restrictive for side quests and random encounters. Sometimes you have to fight or run away in those. Or sometimes stealth or dialog is the intended solution. I talk more about that here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aJmnqZybZ6uhrNE And second, other designers have different goals. Some don't want you to talk your way past encounters, and some don't want you to engage in combat much at all. That's why I saw player agency is a continuum and is used differently in different games. Their goals are different.

[@CainOnGames]

And also, it’s hard to make all those extra solutions, especially dialog ones. Designers need to make difficult decisions about what to keep and what to cut.

[@funnyhatguy]

@@CainOnGames thanks for your answers tim that actually makes so much sense now that i think about it. different developers have different things they like to see in their rpgs just like how a GM prefers somthings(epic battles) to other things (puzzles) not to mention age of decadence and colony ship are fairly short games therfore its so much easier to handle a charisma build in those titles than a game with 85 hours of content like arcanum for example . there were a lot of factors I didn't consider which makes my original comment kind of ignorant

[@CainOnGames]

@@funnyhatguy Not at all! I’m glad when people ask questions like yours. Not all of these things are obvious, and I had to do this for years to figure it out.

[@vsleepystar]

tim we love u

[@spencer183]

Have you played Red Dead Redemption 2? I would love to hear your thoughts on that game based on what you have said about agency. Love your videos Tim!

[@theninjascout]

Hey Tim, do you have any thoughts on modding videogames? Is it an adequate way to get into game development? Could mods be valid examples of one's own work to be potentially inserted into a portfolio?

[@autismspirit]

Mods are a great example of game dev work, and are sometimes a more representative of a part of the dev pipeline than smaller indie games. Be careful though, most of the popular moddable games nowadays (Valve/Bethesda games) have super outdated tech, so knowing some modern game engines would help out as well

[@marcelogonzalez8547]

Thank you for your videos. I'll try to make a game you'd like to play eventually ;)

[@ognjenfilipovic2851]

I , so much, like your way of thinking on all these subjects you made videos about , which makes me think about future . Maybe this will make you laugh , but i have to ask you: Did you choose someone to be your successor to continue your footsteps when you go retire ( sadly that day will come eventually ) ?

[@CosplayZine]

Skull and bones decided to implement player ragency.

[@beoubzabanzi8669]

happy new year

[@divedweller4295]

Looking at Bethesda and their ever greater strikes against player fun in every release.

[@abrahamdrinkin2534]

Even though you don’t like named characters, did you play any of the Witcher games? Have you tried any games that do named characters well?

[@huge_letters]

yoo happy new year Tim!

[@misterj8815]

my biggest pet peeve of Bethesda is the unkillable NPCs. I liked how in Fallout you could kill children, but there was a huuuuge penalty for doing so if you kept it up in the form of the child killer reputation. I get why that can't be done in modern games, but adult NPCs being unkillable is just jarring

[@rastas4766]

Bethesda better be listening.

[@antiqe4286]

Hey Tim, how was 90s LA (or California as a whole) like?

[@Gebohq]

In this video, you seem to advocate that more player agency is always better. Are there cases you feel more agency hurts the game design or where limiting agency is better, and not just "because you don't have the budget or talent to make it" or something in that spirit?

[@RaifSeverence]

Narrative driven experiences are probably the ONLY time limiting agency of the player is recommended. And that would be because the designer wants the player to experience the highs and lows of a narrative. Allowing player agency in that scenario would kill any stakes a narrative may have. (Like oh, we need to go save this important thing else the world will end, but we'll go do that right after we go on a globe trotting tour doing all the menial things we've been putting off)

[@vast634]

For the grenade that you pickpocket into an NPC, did you write specific code so the grenade explodes when its in the inventory? Normally it would just turn into an entry in a list and not have its own logic. Or was it planned to behave like that - starting a timer - from the start?

[@jef_choy]

Someone send this to Bethesda, they need a refresher

[@galdersrontgorrth]

surprise video on the 1st! happy new year!!

[@toadintheh0le]

I'd love to hear your thoughts on Baldurs Gate 3 and Larian as a whole?

[@wesss9353]

What are your thoughts on anti-piracy, DRM, and always on-line single player games? More specific anti-piracy where the developer has gone out of business and no one has rights to the game in regards to the preservation of the game. With more games going digital only and fewer physical copies.

[@raccoons_stole_my_account]

Sadly, most modern games seem to strive for as little player agency as possible. We're simutating beard hairs on Kratos individually but walls still have two magic places where they can be broken, things obviously in reach often can't be picked up etc.

[@sebastianavena]

Thanks to this video, now I realize that I love Fallout 1 & 2 because the huge amount of Agency they have

[@avatarname0008]

Hey Tim what are your thoughts on motion control/vr games are they just gimmicks that will fall off or do you think theres a solid future for them?

[@DistilledDonut]

Hello Tim, are there any features in games that are popular, but you just don't like? Thanks for all the videos. Happy New Year!

[@helgenlane]

Do you think stunlocks and other mechanics that disable or reduce player's agency in combat are good gamedesign in a pve game? What is the role of such mechanics and how do they enhance/worsen player experience?

[@bigchunk1]

Are you okay with encountering a villain who will always run away and be able to escape even if you try to kill him? That's a slightly different flavor than being unkillable or artificially defeating you no matter what you do.

[@lrinfi]

Do you mean, like the cartoonish "villain" Kai Leng? lol (Bioware may never live that one down.) Just another example of artifice creeping into the art, imo. Unlike Tim, I don't want to notice "the hand of the developer" when playing a RPG, especially. If I notice it, something's amiss. If it's just an occasion of "why can't I do this?" or "why can't I say that?", I know it's just because the developer simply didn't think to cover that particular option, whatever it may be, but while it interrupts the flow somewhat, it's easy to ignore because a developer can't possibly cover any and all variations and scenarios that might arise. Otherwise, I might come to feel like the developer is trying to manipulate the player in some way. I'm sure the difference between Tim and I is due to the fact that he's a developer and I'm not, so he knows how to make a game in which a player can become immersed *without* noticing "the hand of the developer" until after the fact when they say, "Wow. What an awesome game. The developers did an amazing job." :)

[@bigchunk1]

@@lrinfi I was actually thinking of Kai Leng when Tim was talking about it. There is an encounter where Kai just defeats you no matter what you do and I'm not sure what they were thinking there. It's not a poor choice situation either, every player loses to Kai before beating the game. Developers are like a camera man to me. If I notice them, I don't like it. It's generally not because of what they don't do. It's because of what they do when I notice it.

[@earthbound9999]

Somehow misread the title as "player agony" at first lmao

[@BrandonCourt]

My question: When is weird good?

[@ShmilS]

Another culprit is when restrictive design and cutscenes come together after you win a boss fight, showing your character clumsily losing actually so that the boss can run away and meet you in the end again >< Also cutscenes where your character does really cool stuff you can't actually do in-game yourself feel a bit disheartening.

[@Mika-Fresh]

The worst implementation of “the hand of the designer” I’ve experienced is MonHun World; the unskippable cutscenes because “we worked hard on the cutscenes, we hope you enjoy them” was some right royal BS. Ryozo was too arrogant in that sense.

[@gilgamecha]

10:30 when your only option is to kill a key NPC who is clearly rational, that's as frustrating as when you are unable to kill them. Kellog in Fallout 4 is an egregious example that ruins the main story's player agency. You should be able to persuade him, trick him, steal from him, interrogate him, investigate him, capture him, join him. Nope. Killing him is the only option even though it's the stupidest thing you could possibly do in terms of the main quest objectives as the PC understands those at that point in the plot (trying to locate your child).

[@ilari90]

@8:50 this, this is why i didn't want to play Deus Ex: Human Revolution again. Nothing prior was of consequence and you just chose from one of 3 end screens. And even worse, if you'd save before the end choice, you could get them all in 5 minutes and achievements for completing all of them :D

[@Scalpaxos]

I don't think there are many games that satisfy these criteria especially in the modern era of gaming, maybe Piranha Bytes and Larian Studios games...

[@liaminwales]

Nothing like an A to B quest with a low wall you cant jump over blocking the way to remove player agency, chat tree's that all have the same outcome whatever you chose also bug me. Auto levelling NPC's to match the player level, It's a lazy way to keep the difficulty inline with the player. Just feels bad when low level early game NPC's are harder to kill at level 40 than LV3, no immersion and defeats the point of levelling up if your effectively weaker.

[@dennislarsen6052]

I was SO frustrated with Neverwinter nights 1 and 2 because the games had great character creation and promised SO MUCH, but in the end you were forced to hack and slash, choices were: be good, join the guard, be evil, join the thieves.... Arrive at the same point with hand waving at your deeds.... Not very satisfying! I usually ended up replaying fallout after giving nwn a go.