How to design games in an era of wikis & guides?

[rusty_shackleford]

Feels like every developer either picks:

A. The developer pretends there is no issue, and that anyone is free to lookup solutions, maps, etc.,
Response:

• Until fairly recently it was generally difficult to get your hands on such wide-ranging guides, maps, and so on. Even if you were willing to drop more money on an official guide it would often not have one fifth of what a modern game's wiki has. This design originated in an era where the majority of players probably had to figure it out on his own, or perhaps discuss it with friends, knowledge percolates slowly, and so on. Obviously it is not so anymore.
• A large part of experiencing a game is not just playing the game yourself but in sharing your experiences, discussing it, etc., I effectively cannot discuss, for example, the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2. Nearly everyone who has played the game looked up the solution, especially if they played it some time after release. I am playing a completely separate game… and which one of us is playing the game as it was intended to be played? Most other players will be unable to understand how I could have been moved by having to sacrifice a companion to complete the mission, because other players just looked up the optimal setup.
• Why have the content at all? If the massive majority of people are just using a browser on a separate window, what's the point? Why spend time making it?

OR, as I've seen begun to popup in newer games…

B. The developer designs their game around you having the wiki open on a second monitor.
Response:

• **** you.

Incredible, you made it even ******* worse.

---

• Do you have an opinion on this topic?
• Any ideas for game design that is resistant against looking it up on a wiki?

[Ranselknulf]

C: Use EAC or other cheat detection to monitor for open wiki pages.

[Tangerine]

Underrail's DLC had a cryptography puzzle where the answer was randomly generated. You could look up how to do it on the wiki, but you couldn't get the answer for your specific instance of it. There was a tool online that would solve it for you, but you still reduced the number of people who got the answer with an online lookup.

[rusty_shackleford]

Do you have an opinion on this topic?

Just remembered this one:
Project Gorgon's brewing skill has the properties of various ingredients be randomized for each character so you had to rely entirely on personal experimentation.

I don't really remember how it works, I just remember that.

[Lich]

Make the game skill-based.

[traxtan]

Copyright strike all video game wikis

[wndrbr]

There is no solution, you just have to design the game as normal and hope that the players won't be metagaming.

I effectively cannot discuss, for example, the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2. Nearly everyone who has played the game looked up the solution, especially if they played it some time after release. I am playing a completely separate game… and which one of us is playing the game as it was intended to be played? Most other players will be unable to understand how I could have been moved by having to sacrifice a companion to complete the mission, because other players just looked up the optimal setup.

You don't really need to metagame to figure out the optimal setup for Suicide mission. If you're an experienced player familiar with the usual gameplay tropes, then you can make a guess that all of your party members need to be loyal. It makes sense to send the experienced engineer to do an engineering task, it makes sense to send an experienced tactician to lead the second squad, it makes sense to pick your best biotic to cast the magic defensive field, etc.

that's being said, i don't like how the game has the optimal setup that lets you avoid all the sacrifices. It should've been a more elaborate version of Virmire choice from ME1.

[maidenhaver]

Make an optimized buildfag path. Insult players who take the best path. Shogun 2 included it's wiki in the game.

[rusty_shackleford]

There is no solution, you just have to design the game as normal and hope that the players won't be metagaming.

I'd be surprised if less than 3 in 4 people are actively following walkthroughs step by step when playing games at this point

[rusty_shackleford]

You don't really need to metagame to figure out the optimal setup for Suicide mission. If you're an experienced player familiar with the usual gameplay tropes, then you can make a guess that all of your party members need to be loyal. It makes sense to send the experienced engineer to do an engineering task, it makes sense to send an experienced tactician to lead the second squad, it makes sense to pick your best biotic to cast the magic defensive field, etc.

@Bertram_Tung has failed it like 5 times in chat so far and is save-scumming it

[wndrbr]

You need to find some big shot youtuber who makes those gay multi-hour essays, and commission a video on how it's better to play videogames blind. It's the only way to make redditors stop reading walkthroughs.

[Lich]

The expectation that gamers are entitled to 100% games as long as they're not disabled must go. Not all final bosses should be beatable by normal people.

[Vaako]

Well certainly not like Fromsoft and move NPCs arrounds when certain things happen in the world but dont tell the player, so he would have to backtrack through the whole game after every mainstory boss.

For riddles and backtracking you need to build in character progression even if you fail at attempting to solve things. Something like loot goblins or the caits/octopuffs in Octopath traveler are good for that even if they are very similar to the para mobs from Lufia, they are super fast always try to escape but cant take much dmg but give ridiculous xp/money. Riddles you could have items similar to the fromsoft keystones which can be used to bypass them but then you lose out on rare loot like the stuff you get from the little sisters in bioshock but I guess they would have to be randomized for no guides to work.

[geftsu]

The developer pretends there is no issue, and that anyone is free to lookup solutions, maps, etc.,

Back in the olden days there were magazines with guides, tips and tricks. The only difference is that now the guides are easier to publish and easier to access. Some of the magic of being forced to figure things out for yourself or even sharing tips and tricks with your friends may be gone, but you can always choose to not look up "Top 10 best builds" or "100% achievement walkthrough". It's all on you.

The devs should never design a game in a way that necessities accessing something outside the game to get the full intended experience. Kind of like if you are making a show adaptation of a book/game/ttrpg, your adaptation should contain within itself everything that the viewer needs to know for the story to make sense without looking up lore online or having context outside of your show, otherwise your adaptation is a failure and you should be ashamed (Arcane).

[Oyster Sauce]

SEO Fextralife as much as possible to ensure it's the top result in Google so that nobody can find any information or functional links

[Irenaeus]

Play a play-by-post at RPGHQ with no wiki, solutions or even a strategy guide.

[Tinky Winky]

There is no solution, you just have to design the game as normal and hope that the players won't be metagaming.

^This. There's a reason why the best CRPG classics are all on the easier side, and why buildfag niggertrash likes KoTC are genuinely **** no one cares about other than a few sets of spergs. (Underrail can also be seen as a buildfag slop to some degree, although it can be finished without minmaxxing on lower difficulty so it passes.)

This generation is ****** nevertheless. Just remember those zoomer gamers are actually the ones with the most patience and the highest attention span among their age group; your average zoomer would prefer to scroll through tiktok because even playing games with wiki guides is too much effort for them.

[Oyster Sauce]

A heartfelt message at the beginning of the game urging players not to cheat themselves would do more than any technological solution. Of course, you can't design your game like Kingmaker if you go this route.

[J1M]

I usually look up a wiki due to a lack of trust in the average game developer. If I believed there would be a rewarding gameplay loop of getting stuck, possibly putting the game down until the next day, coming back and trying something I thought up myself and seeing that rewarded, I would do that and it would feel great.

But for the average game it's just as likely that I'm soft-locked and experiencing a bug or the designer put in an obtuse solution that is not hinted at or otherwise impossible to determine via play.

I also enjoy wikis for things like showing what level classes get abilities at since that basic information is usually conveyed very poorly in-game.

It would be interesting to create a game that uses a seed value that determines how things are placed and ordered, recipes, translations of runes, and such that a wiki would only be relevant to one seed value. Just to see how the market would respond. Would everyone who recommends the game include recommending the seed value from the wiki? Would players create a wiki with dozens of permutations so the user could get the answer after entering their seed value? Would nobody play the game beyond the first puzzle?

[Xenich]

Feels like every developer either picks:

A. The developer pretends there is no issue, and that anyone is free to lookup solutions, maps, etc.,
Response:

• Until fairly recently it was generally difficult to get your hands on such wide-ranging guides, maps, and so on. Even if you were willing to drop more money on an official guide it would often not have one fifth of what a modern game's wiki has. This design originated in an era where the majority of players probably had to figure it out on his own, or perhaps discuss it with friends, knowledge percolates slowly, and so on. Obviously it is not so anymore.
• A large part of experiencing a game is not just playing the game yourself but in sharing your experiences, discussing it, etc., I effectively cannot discuss, for example, the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2. Nearly everyone who has played the game looked up the solution, especially if they played it some time after release. I am playing a completely separate game… and which one of us is playing the game as it was intended to be played? Most other players will be unable to understand how I could have been moved by having to sacrifice a companion to complete the mission, because other players just looked up the optimal setup.
• Why have the content at all? If the massive majority of people are just using a browser on a separate window, what's the point? Why spend time making it?

OR, as I've seen begun to popup in newer games…

B. The developer designs their game around you having the wiki open on a second monitor.
Response:

• **** you.

Incredible, you made it even ******* worse.

---

• Do you have an opinion on this topic?
• Any ideas for game design that is resistant against looking it up on a wiki?

Some companies began to combat this with RNG style solutions of various types. EQ 2 was interesting with some secrets they put in that began to have random schedules as to when something might appear, not simply mobs, but also dungeon entrances and the like (I think Splitpaw Quests had something along these lines and some of the quests in various zones had similar approaches).

Even still, the autism of the times overpowered it by coming up with detailed analysis as to the scheduling.

I prefer companies to operate on the position that "If you are stupid enough to screw your own game up by cheating, don't whine about it, just look in the mirror and point to the stupid guy you see". The only problem though as it concerns MMOs, this will put the honest player at a massive disadvantage, which becomes a problem if the game is competitively focused.

I am not saying I am not guilty of seeking aids over the years, but I found that as you said, it creates a completely different game and probably explains why some people dismiss games I thought were fantastic in the past. I know it had to be because they cheated and cheapened the game experience entirely.

I think back to playing the early adventure games in the 80's. The ones I loved the most were the ones I struggled with and found interesting secrets in them while playing while the ones I "cheated on" (hefty phone bill by the way) I finished feeling... cheated, like the game was lacking and shallow. Thing is, I realized I was at fault for this, but for some reason a lot of the people today will cheat the game, then blame the game for being unappealing after they do. It is like they can't connect the dots as to why the game was the way it was and they continue to demand the same thing over and over again... insanity.

[DemoGraph]

Do you have an opinion on this topic?
Any ideas for game design that is resistant against looking it up on a wiki?

I do.
Randomizers and/or good opponent AI.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Randomization, not just of the content but also the systems. Ie in Sam's playthrough, he finds that magic builds were really good for him, so he goes online and writes a guide or touts on forums that the meta is magic builds. But in Bob's playthrough, the magic in his game is slightly weaker, the spell scrolls have been rearranged so he can't get access to the same build that Sam used, etc. In Sam's playthrough, A, B, and C happen to him (be it events, or different routes in a dungeon and different bosses or different plot events, etc), so that's what he writes in his guide and what you should do. But in Bob's playthrough, he instead encounters X, Y, and Z, so Sam's walkthrough was not very useful for him. This way, people are disincentivized to use walkthroughs that tell them what is the best thing to do and to instead just play the game and do what works what's best for them.

[asf]

that is like idiots who like to read spoilers before watching movies, who cares

[Xenich]

Do you have an opinion on this topic?
Any ideas for game design that is resistant against looking it up on a wiki?

I do.
Randomizers and/or good opponent AI.

Never works out how you would like though. I used to be a strong advocate for using automated RNG systems in placement of various hand tuned things within a game. If done right, respectful to the lore, location, etc... it could be a powerful tool that would ease development, and create a sense of wonder in exploration.

It is never implemented that way. It is implemented by the bean counters as a means to reduce work load in most of the situations I have seen and the result has been disastrous over the years. It has created bland, generic, and shallow content that is often completely disassociated from game world.

Ever take an idea that really had merit to your execs and have them completely strip out the purpose of it, the intent and direction only to leave it to some shallow disconnected means where it ends up with a result that goes in the opposite direction that was intended?

Yeah, this is what RNG systems did to gaming. Made them cheap ******* gimmicks that are lazy, lacking any creative imagination.

[aimlesshealer]

You either have to make peace with the fact that some players are going to taint their experience or you have to embrace it. I prefer embracing it to a more antagonistic approach. Sometimes it seems that devs get so obsessed with stopping people from playing "the wrong way" that they lose track of actually making the game enjoyable (or at least it wastes effort that could be better spent elsewhere). Of course you can and should manipulate your players, but trying to forcibly control them doesn't work and only makes everyone frustrated. At the end of the day people are gonna do what they want to do.

Dark Souls was designed around shared player knowledge to such a degree that player-made hints are a gameplay mechanic. Rather than fight against it, they incorporated it and designed with its inevitability in mind. Hence knowing what to do and actually doing it are leagues apart in that game, and looking up a guide only robs the player of a small part of the overall experience.

[MrTwinkls]

New games have so many bugs and bad design decisions those days that you need to have some kind of guide just to make sure if what you are trying to do is actually gonna work in your version and not softlock, break scripts or screw you over in other way. So I play them years later after release when the games are properly playtested and patched.

[SpellSword]

I don't think it is wise to try to prevent the player from looking up a guide. Better to focus on making sure everything actually works in the game during development than spend time obfuscating.

New games have so many bugs and bad design decisions those days that you need to have some kind of guide just to make sure if what you are trying to do is actually gonna work in your version and not softlock, break scripts or screw you over in other way. So I play them years later after release when the games are properly playtested and patched.

It's pretty vexing when you finally resort to a guide only to find that whatever has you deadlocked is actually just a bug, that removes a stairway for instance.

[rusty_shackleford]

Got a feeling a lot of you think the souls games would be improved if you could trivialize the saving system with a quick reload

[traxtan]

Got a feeling a lot of you think the souls games would be improved if you could trivialize the saving system with a quick reload

I don't remember this in dead rising 2 but in dead rising 2 off the record you can just reload checkpoint and it puts you back at the nearest loading screen or cutscene you entered which ruins the entire game. Makes the game so much easier and boring like every other game in existence.

[DemoGraph]

Do you have an opinion on this topic?
Any ideas for game design that is resistant against looking it up on a wiki?

I do.
Randomizers and/or good opponent AI.

Never works out how you would like though.

Yes, well, nobody managed to do it well yet, so all the corpo slops don't know what to imitate.

Yeah, this is what RNG systems did to gaming. Made them cheap ******* gimmicks that are lazy, lacking any creative imagination.

Game devs generally aren't known to be good programmers or innovators.

I once dug pretty deep into a properly randomized magic system homebrew. I ended up with something an order of magnitude more complex than any existing cRPG magic system. It ended up to be kinda like Ars Magica++.
The largest barrier I stumbled upon (and never truly solved) was thematic consistency - if spells are randomized, it will be pretty hard to create a reproducible impression from the system as a whole. And it would occasionally generate dumb results ("ball of exploding chickens" or something).