Difficulty of the win

[awhan]

Hey everyone, just a quick topic I wanted to bring up since it came up a couple times in the meeting today.

A few people were worried about some aspects of the design; thinking it might be too hard for the players to win. Some people also had this notion that they wanted the players to win and I just wanted to see what our stance on this was.

So while I acknowledge people like to win and it would be nice if our players won the ARG, I'm leaning much more heavily towards having the final decision in our game be challenging, a puzzle that the players actually have to think about. Essentially, I'm not in favor of what I'd consider a shallow victory (if it becomes glaringly obvious to the players the difference between good/evil sanity/insanity).

I personally think that we're not giving the players enough credit. There were a few ideas that people didn't like because they were worried it would make it too difficult for the players to win. (For example, dropping the seed of doubt on the final day.)

People seemed to like the idea that the players would have to converse amongst themselves before making the final decision and I think the harder that final decision is, the more interesting that final live event will be.

Overall I got the sense that most people in the group are leaning towards a more straightforward choice, which is totally fine. I may disagree with it from a game design standpoint but ultimately I'm fine with taking the game in this direction. I just wanted to make this post to put my point of view in a more organized fashion and see what you guys were thinking. Also please let me know if I'm missing a point from the other side of the argument. I may have overlooked something in the confusion today.

[Max H]

I agree with you completely, the final puzzle should be challenging so the players feel accomplished if they figure it out. They won't get that sense of accomplishment if we set them up to win.


The only issue I have is that it seems like it might come down to a fifty-fifty guess as to whether or not to smash the dollhouse. If we tell the players the dollhouse is the good guy throughout the game and then right before the last day we say wait no the dollhouse is actually the bad guy, it might become too easy or too ambiguous for the players and its not much of a puzzle. The seed that the doll house is bad should be something the players have to find out for themselves, we can't just give it to them or it will be too obvious. A better way to do it might be to set up a mystery around the doomsayer. We know the doomsayer realized the dollhouse was insane and tried to smash it, but the players won't know any of that at the start of the day.


Maybe they just get an email from the doomsayer saying that he needs to meet with them to tell the players something important and its too risky to say more in an email. But when you show up to meet him he is nowhere to be found, because the dollhouse sent somebody from the club to kidnapped him to shut him up. The players have to solve this mystery which leads them to find out that somebody in the club was responsible for the doomsayers disappearance. This is the seed that allows them to figure out that the dollhouse is responsible for everything, but we might want to present the players with an opportunity to disobey the doll house which will lead them to another subtle clue that the dollhouse is evil just in case they don't it together from the seed. If they aren't skeptical about the dollhouse after two hints then they don't deserve to win the game, and it would set the players up for a nice debate about what to do.


Just an idea, but it would make that final day pretty fun especially if we make the stakes really high and the tasks throughout the week ethically ambiguous.