Well, Alopex, let us know if we need to exit stage left from your thread here, I can try to clip out the unrelated discussion and start a new thread. I do hope our dialogue is helpful in your future level design though, whatever choices you make!
proYorp wrote:...it's not possible to control someone's exact experience...Every variable cannot be accounted for.... At that point, it is outside of the control of the modder...No two people will have the exact same experience, and even the same person at different times in life will react differently to something.
I think in an absolute sense you’re right, but there is plenty a modder can control, or at least strongly influence, when it comes to player experience, and I think designing with intention will always be an act of controlling the player to some extent.
One experience I recently designed was for players to be threatened by a sudden appearance of the Shikadi Master. Ideally, I want the player to feel surprise and danger, for them to focus on the Master, to experience a challenge but for them to overcome this challenge on the first encounter.
The ideal case is hard to achieve: I have to determine what is likely to cause surprise, judge danger relative to the rest of the game and according to what I think the average player feels, I have to design the room in a way that I believe will draw focus visually to the Master, I have to judge the average player’s skill level and what might be a challenge but also achievable on a first pass.
What can I more concretely control of the player’s experience? I can create a threat that takes place in a certain way that the player must have some kind of reaction to. I can define it so that the player must navigate Keen in certain ways to avoid the threat (possibly limiting it to one solution, or keeping it open ended). I can control for how much time the player has to react. I can control what the player is able to see on screen and hear when the threat takes place (although I can’t control what they actually see or how what they hear affects them).
Taking all of this into account, I feel I can reasonably control what players will experience. You’re right that some player probably won’t experience what I intend even if playing as intended (not cheating), but in the grand scheme of things, this is only one micro experience in what will be a host of micro experiences in a level. If my design is accurate (and if my intended experiences are more generalized that the Shikadi Master example), I can reasonably expect some of the experiences are going to hit as intended.
All this is to say, I think controlling player experience can be reasonably achievable, it is part of designing with intention, and it can be rewarding for both designer and player.
proYorp wrote:My point is that there is a 100% chance that someone is going to play in a way that isn't how the author intended. It doesn't seem worth it to put effort into trying to keep those few people out.
I'd argue that intentionality matters, that someone cheating is deliberately not experiencing the game as intended. I can see why preventing a player like that from experiencing one’s work might seem worth it; that disabling cheats seems to protect the designer’s work from being taken advantage of.
My previous argument, though, is that this type of player isn’t who we design for anyway, and that our audience is not going somehow become this type of player, so disabling cheats doesn’t really matter when it comes to protecting the experiences designers have crafted. It’s worth noting, though, that this would be different if we had to worry about the cheating player spoiling things for the intended audience (this was a worry for me with BotB, that someone would cheat to get to the ending and try to spoil it).
Its also worth mentioning that while I think protecting experiences isn’t a great argument for disabling cheats, a reason in that context to have cheats enabled is not readily obvious either (certainly, though, in the context of inclusivity). This has prompted me to consider my own actions recently in providing cheats to a player that asked for them for BotB. I realized that to me, when it comes to protecting experiences, that the case of the person who needs to cheat once just to pass a situation they can’t overcome, and then disable cheats again to continue the experiences as designed, makes keeping cheats worthwhile. This type of player is in my audience. For modders inclined to disable cheats to protect their designed experiences, I’d suggest putting cheats like god mode or jump cheat on a limited timer instead (not sure this can be patched, but certainly in source code modding).
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This isn't intended as a conclusion, but I wanted to point out, I think both proYorp and I agree and stress that modders should know who their audience is and how their design choices will affect and/or restrict that audience. I believe, and I suspect proYorp as well, that it’s great that Alopex designed with intention; creating a challenge where victory is an achievement over difficulty, and that their design choice to disable cheats wasn't random but compliments their goal, and that they understand some players are barred from the intended achievement.