LogFAQs > #977686386

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Thats what the gameplay coming first means. Everything in the game should support the gameplay.

No, it means that you strive to make enjoyable gameplay even if that creates some inconsistencies with other elements. Trying to be consistent is still good, but putting gameplay first just means that your first priority is making enjoyable gameplay.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

If anything has to be sacrificed it should be anything other than the gameplay, whether that be story or realism or character development or world building.

And in cases like this (again, where it's done properly, not poorly), the sacrifice made is that moment of ludonarrative consistency for a small handful of players who have already been deliberately deviating from the narrative for the sake of indulging in more gameplay. That moment of inconsistency - experienced only in edge cases where the player has already been introducing other inconsistencies - is a much more reasonable sacrifice than taking chunks out of anything else in a way that will make them less enjoyable in their own rights for the vast majority of players.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Worth it. Avoiding gameplay dissonance is more important than setting the stakes

It really isn't. Establishing meaningful stakes is a fundamental requirement of having a story worth caring about. A moment of dissonance for a handful of players who already shouldn't mind that dissonance because they've deliberately created it (reminder: if you're doing side quests, that's you saying "hang on, immediate world-ending threat, I want to go collect some pickles for this dude") is very much not worse than stripping out the stakes that make a story worth getting invested in.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

If my character has the power (and reason) to go through the maintain, or jump over the river, then I will complain about them finding a bridge or way around the mountain.

And they don't, in this case. That's the point: The grinding you've done does not establish a canonical power level. It can't, because you're dealing with a static story that can't change in response to you. Canonically, you're too weak to win the fight in question.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

In fact, one of my biggest story complaints in xenoblade 2 is rex not jumping over the relatively small gap in the space station. Something he canonically should be able to do with ease at the point.

Using the grappling hook that they showed failing, or using the power of the sword waifu who was deliberately withholding that power in that moment? Neither of the abilities Rex had that gave him that kind of jumping power were available to him in that moment (and, extended further, it stands to reason that any other blades that might have helped would also have refused once they realized the situation). Moreover, even if he had figured out some sort of contrived way to get across, it wouldn't have changed the outcome of the scene, so why contrive one?

YoukaiSlayer posted...

You talk about how constraining what I want to do is while endorsing them sticking to the same exact formula every single time. That's far more constraining than what I propose even.

"You should never put X in a story" is always going to be infinitely more constraining than "it's okay if you put Y in a story," no matter what X and Y are, by simple virtue of the fact that the former is a constraint and the latter is not.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

As a piece of commercial entertainment, this is not a good enough reason for me, or at least not a reason for it to be beyond criticism. And if you really wanna make it simple, then I want them not to, simple as that.

And that's fine, but your position of "the protagonist should never lose in the story" is taking that opinion to an unreasonable extent. You asked why developers insist on putting scripted losses in games where it's possible to overpower the fight and contradict the story. The answer is that losing can make stories interesting, being able to become overpowered is interesting, and provided the scripted loss is balanced such that the only people that overpower the fight are those that have deliberately engineered that contradiction (and therefore accepted the dissonance in all other aspects of the game), that contradiction isn't a big enough deal to be worth sacrificing the story they want to tell or the game they want to make. If one plot loss makes you upset enough to ruin the whole experience for you, that's on you and you can't expect people to give up writing interesting stories to cater to that.

If you want to move past that dissonance, try framing the scripted loss as a plot device instead of a real fight. You know you haven't failed as a player by losing the fight. Just hold on to that knowledge and enjoy one-shotting the next thing you fight.